The expansion of the war is not about protecting the state integrity of Ukraine for the "good guys" from the West, but on the contrary, about the extensive depopulation and buy-out of this important country in Central Eurasia. The Eurasian heartland is to become part of the Western bloc by hook or by crook and furthermore be removed from Russia's sphere of influence.
In addition, the US-led Western bloc wants to massively weaken the hated enemy Russia or destabilise it as much as possible.

Ukraine war is not just a proxy war against Russia - Ukraine is a victim

It remains to be seen whether the naivety of many Ukrainians will now gradually give way to realisation and disillusionment and whether this will translate into action.
This is not just a proxy war between the Western bloc under the direction of the USA and Russia, in which Ukraine is being used. Ukraine is intended to weaken Russia and is both a battlefield and a victim.
On the other hand, it is also a The West's war against Ukrainein which Russia - after endless provocations from the West for more than 10 years - is now doing the dirty work.

The thesis is that the aim of Western strategists is to seize control of Ukraine in the medium term. What better way to achieve this than with a fratricidal war between Russia and Ukraine that is fuelled from outside and in which both lose? And... some others are reaping the expected benefits. The Western defence industry and investment companies are the main beneficiaries, and the neo-conservative power elite in the USA - which is neither conservative nor liberal, as it likes to pretend - is improving its own position both geopolitically and domestically, at least that is the plan. It couldn't be more sophisticated and perfidious. Anyone who does not see through this game of the transatlantic Western bloc war alliance, at least to some extent, is struck with unheard-of naivety. This behaviour has been common for more than 100 years and is characteristic of unscrupulous US geostrategists, in alliance with Great Britain.

At the same time, indescribable sums of European money - taxpayers' money from several hundred million taxpayers - are benefiting defence companies and other industries as a result of this war. This is because most of the "Ukraine aid" is being channelled directly into Western arms companies, mainly in the USA, and shareholders are profiting - taxpayers are paying for it; soldiers, increasingly often forcibly recruited, are dying; Ukraine is increasingly becoming a field of rubble; Russia is increasingly confronted with major damage on its own territory, and the social systems of states that take in Ukrainian refugees are also paying for this diabolical business. The stooges from the European states and the EU institutions, who rarely serve the welfare of their countries and the European peoples, are playing along with this diabolical haggling.

NATO is no longer a defence alliance, but a geostrategic means to an end. Provocation is the method.

Where do honest peace efforts come from?

A so-called peace summit in Switzerland on 15 and 16 June 2024, which was not attended by Russia as a major party to the war, speaks volumes about how the leadership circles of the West assess the situation and where further developments should be directed: Continuation of war and destruction - a peace prevention summit met there. Military support one Consultation between the two parties is not the way to organise a peace summit. As has even been officially stated, the focus of the summit is not on a ceasefire or the desired end to the war, but on grain exports from Ukraine, the safety of a nuclear power plant and various humanitarian issues. These are undoubtedly important issues, but a peace summit should focus on something else.

Russia is not seen as a negotiating partner on the grounds that Russian ideas and demands are considered unrealistic and not worth discussing. In contrast, the united West is making maximum demands of Russia that brush aside Russian interests and sensitivities, which the Russian side is expected to accept. This undermines any peace efforts.
However, in the countries of Western Europe, anyone who looks at the context or points out developments and previous history is quickly branded a "Putin sympathiser", a "friend of Russia" or a "right-wing extremist". This primitive, unobjective framing and malicious stigmatisation is carried out hand in hand by the mainstream media and politicians from leading parties. The world needs understanding and every serious endeavour to bring about a peaceful solution, and yes: the West and Ukraine would certainly have to swallow some bitter toads. But the West is not prepared to do this from the outset. Concessions on the part of the united West would also mean admitting that the interference from the USA and the EU in Ukraine's internal affairs, which began before 2014 and included the coup against the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, has failed.

Strategy of US strategists and EU in Ukraine failed

Every bit of retreat on the part of the USA and its Western helpers in the direction of Russia's positions would reveal that the strategy of integrating Ukraine as a whole, including Crimea with the strategically important Black Sea port of Sevastopol and the Balaklava submarine bunker, politically, economically and socially into the Western bloc and removing it completely from Russian influence has failed. Russia, with President Putin at the helm, has already outmanoeuvred US strategies and its allies several times before, which is increasingly increasing their hatred towards it. With the Russian-initiated referendum in Crimea, which resulted in its incorporation into Russian territory - whether or not this was contrary to international law - both Ukraine and the strategic leadership from the USA have suffered a defeat.

The black and white polarisation in this war that is presented to us on a daily basis is a display of the narrative that has long been implanted in our minds: Russia is the villain and the only evil - Ukraine the innocent victim. The fact that there are other key players in the game is ignored. Equally insignificant is the fact that Ukraine was known as an extraordinarily corrupt country until the outbreak of war as a result of the Russian attack in February 2022, and that in the aftermath of the so-called Euro-Maidan in 2014, ultra-nationalist forces with hatred of Russia and even links to National Socialism were able to gain influence in society, politics and the military. These not unimportant facts have now been wiped away.

Hungarian President Orbán recently had to put up with public criticism because he travelled to Russia immediately after taking over the EU Council presidency to discuss the possibilities of finding peace with the Russian president. Orbán was not authorised or, as EU Council President, not authorised to hold such talks without consultation. Everyone should be keen to see a ceasefire and at least the possibility of peace negotiations, whether they are acting from a high-ranking EU position or as president of their own country.
Unless at least one major miracle occurs in the coming weeks, we will be driven into a major war that will possibly spread beyond Ukraine. But where could such a miracle come from?

We may be a long way from seeing Donald Trump, the US presidential candidate once again, as a saviour, but if there is at least some substance to his announcement and he is able to work towards ending the war and keeping NATO and the US out of international military adventures in the medium term, this year's US elections could bring about something of a miracle. After all, Trump is already working in this direction as a candidate in the beginning election campaign. In any case, his presidency could put an end to warmongering with greater Republican influence in both chambers.
Other actors from other countries could contribute to bringing a negotiated solution closer, against the Western European warmongers. Certainly, these are small rays of hope, but a chance for a miracle, perhaps even a big one.

• https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/hunter-bidens-geschaefte-werfen-neue-fragen-auf-19116368.html

• https://www.fr.de/politik/joe-biden-hunter-bestechung-vorwuerfe-ukraine-burisma-trump-usa-selenskyj-slotschewskyj-zr-92345578.html

• https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/joe-biden-und-die-ukraine-affaere-das-ist-hunter-bidens-gas-connection-a-1288590.html

• https://www.epochtimes.de/politik/ausland/spekulationen-ueber-orban-besuch-in-moskau-kiew-treibt-produktion-von-drohnen-voran-a4770904.html?utm_source=nl-breaking-subs&src_src=nl-breaking-subs&utm_campaign=nl-breaking_2024-07-05&src_cmp=nl-breaking_2024-07-05&utm_medium=email&utm_content=yoD986o2f~177

Der Beitrag Der Ukraine-Krieg ist ein Stellvertreterkrieg gegen Russland, und die Ukraine wird geopfert erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

CPAC HUNGARY, a major international event organised by the 'Center for Fundamental Rights', took place on 25 and 26 April 2024. It was a major event at which 80 politicians, journalists and influencers from six continents appeared as speakers and panellists and at least 3,000 participants, including around 500 foreign guests, came together.

A welcoming speech by Donald Trump as a video message was also part of the two-day programme, in which he referred to the Hungarian President, Viktor Orbán, as his friend.

In the mainstream media, at least in Germany, this event naturally went unnoticed.
The event website states: „The real media, the real news media network, was represented by 36 media brands from 13 countries, with 140 press representatives. There were also 50 exhibiting partners, including think tanks from the US and Central Europe, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Poland.“
Zitat Ende

https://www.cpachungary.com/en/

The programme consisted mainly of speeches and discussion panels. Apparently, Hans-Georg Maaßen (Werte-Union, formerly CDU) was the only German guest in the programme. The two days of the event were divided into several sections, each of which had a motto or title: "WOKEBUSTERS", "SOVEREIGNTY LIVES, GLOBALISM DIES", "SAVE THE WEST, PROTECT THE BORDERS", "GENDER ZERO", "WE WIN, THEY LOSE - 2024, AN ELECTION SUPERYEAR". The upcoming elections to the EU Parliament were a key topic at the event and took centre stage in a number of speeches and discussions.

The programme consisted mainly of speeches and discussion panels. Apparently, Hans-Georg Maaßen (Werte-Union, formerly CDU) was the only German guest in the programme. The two days of the event were divided into several sections, each of which had a motto or title: "WOKEBUSTERS", "SOVEREIGNTY LIVES, GLOBALISM DIES", "SAVE THE WEST, PROTECT THE BORDERS", "GENDER ZERO", "WE WIN, THEY LOSE - 2024, AN ELECTION SUPERYEAR". The upcoming elections to the EU Parliament were a key topic at the event and took centre stage in a number of speeches and discussions.
https://www.cpachungary.com/en/agenda

The speech of Eva Vlaardingerbroek

I would like to draw your attention to the speech by Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a young Dutch woman. In her speech, she addressed the consequences of immigration policy in the majority of European countries. She described the replacement migration, Islamisation and violent crime that the proponents of immigration impose on the citizens of European countries in concise and catchy words and backed this up with figures. Eva Vlaardingerbroek also explains why she believes that the elites have declared war on the white peoples. She makes clear in no uncertain terms her rejection of the EU bureaucracy and the "rotten foundations" of the European Union, on which, in her opinion, it is no longer possible to build a house. Here is the text of her speech for you to read - the English text was taken unchanged from her speech: * * *

Hello Hungary, hello Budapest,

hello fellow Europeans and American Friends

Thank you so much for having me

Allow me to skip formalities for a moment and dive into a subject that is no so cheerful but very, very nescessary to discus. Let me walk through the last seven days in Europe. This week in Stockholm, three elderly women in the 70s were stabbed in broad daylight on the street.

In London, four people were stabbed in a time span of just 42 hours.

In Paris, hundrets of African migrants took tot he streets to riot, and in Brigolo, also in France, yet another church was bunred down tot he ground.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just a few incidents of just a couple of days on our beautiful continent. But we all know that these „incidents“ aren’t incidents anymore. If there is one thing that’s for sure, it’s we know and our governments know that there is a link between mass migration and crime.

In the Duth city of Dordrecht something interesting happened the other days. They announced, and it is a small city in the Netherlands, in my home country, that a new asylum center will be put in that little town. And what did the municipality do? They said, we are going to offer citizens who live in the vicinity oft he center 1000 EUROS to take extra safety measures.

Our new reality in Europe consists of frequent rape, stabbings, killings, murders, shootings, even beheadings. But let me be clear about one thing. This did not used happen before. This is a newly imported problem.

Samuel P Huntington predicted this over 25 years ago, when he wrote, and I quote, „in the new world of mass migration, the most pervasive, important and dangerous conflicts will not be between the social classes. They will not be between the rich and the poor. They will be between people to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilisations.“ Well, boy, was he right!

And the worst part is, we as a society seem to have become indifferent to it. When a another whit boy or white girl dies at the hands of an immigrant, we might shake our head, we might let out a sigh, we might even get angry for a minute or two, and then we go on with our lives. We offer the family thoughts and prayers, but nothing ever changes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what does that say about us? This is a response of a society that has already given up. A society that has already accepted it’s defeat.

But is this true? Have we given up? Do we really accept the new reality that our globalist leaders have in mind for us?

I know one thing for sure, and that is if nothing changes, if we don’t start seriously fight for our continent, our religion, our people, our countries, then this time that we life in will go down in history as the time in which western nations no longer had to get invaded by hostile armies in ordert to be conquered. This time will then go down in history as the periode in which the invader was actively invited in by a currupt elite. And not only did this corrupt elite invite the enemy in, the made the native population pay for it, too.

Everyone who has eyes can see it. The native white Christian European population is beeing replaced at an ever-accelerating rate.

Let me back this up for you with some statistics from my home country.

Let us take Amsterdam, the capital. Amsterdam currently consists of 56 per cent migrants.

The Hague, 58 per cent migrants.

Rotterdam, almost 60 per cent migrants.

And, of course, most of this immigrants come from non-Christian, non-Western African and Middle Eastern countries. Conclusion, the Dutch population is already outnumbered in the majority in our cities.

But let’s look onwards. London, 54 per cent migranten. Again, conclusion, native population outnumbered.

Brussels, colour me shocked, 70 per cent migranten. Conclusion, the native population majorly outnumbered. And other Europeans will, of course, follow suit soon if they haven’t already.

So I’m going to draw the forbidden conclusion, The Great Replacement Theory is no longer a theory, it’s reality. And what’s interesting about replacement is that the establishment will either deny its existence or, when they admit to it, they say that it’s a good thing, that the native European population is soon no longer a majority on its own Continent.

Dutch national disgrace and dubbed ‚climate Pope‘ Frans Timmermans already stated in 2015 that diversity is humanity’s destiny and that Europe will be diverse. And, of course, by now, I think we all know what they mean with the word ‚diversity‘. It means less white people, less of you.

Imagine this in an Asian or an African country. Imagine their leaders rejoicing in the fact that their people will soon no longer be a majority in their own country! Absolutely unthinkable – unimaginable

So what in the world is wrong with our leaders?

The underlying sentiment of what they say is always the same. Our establishment claims that white people are evil and that our history is somehow fundamentally different from that of others.

Consciously or unconsciously, they have sucked up the lies and the anti-white dogmas oft the neo-Marxist critical race theory. That’s why the totalitarians in Brussels are trying to force you, the Hungarian people, a sovereign nation to accept immigrants despite the fact that the population has said „no“ and so as the government.

But make no mistake, the majority of the Dutch people haven’t asked for it either. Just like Brussels is forcing Hungary to accept these hordes of immigrants, they are doing the same now even in the smallest of towns of the Netherlands. No part may remain Dutch in the tradition sense of the word. No part of Europe may remain European.

And it is not difficult to untderstand why. If the old Europe still exists in certain places and people will be able to compare the new Europe tot he old and newsflash, they will prefer the old. That’s why the Eurocrats hate Hungary so much.

And their message is clear. Our way of life, our Christian religion, our nations, they have to go without exception. Their vision of the future is the neo-liberal, unrecognizable Europe where every city becomes of like Brussels: Ugly, dirty unsafe, zero social cohesion, where the buildings are constantly under construction and they never ever seem to finish. And even when they do, the end result is uglier somehow than what they started with.

And what are we left with? A permanent state of isolation, confusion and disorientation

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the New World Order.

Applause from the audience

So, what’s the antidote? – A strong Christian Europe of sovereign nation states. That’s why we need to outright reject the lie that nationalism causes war. It’s not nationalism or national sovereignty that causes war. It’s expansionism! And where in Europe do we find that nowerdays? – In one place and one place only: Brussels.

Applause

Isn’t it funny how the same people who erode our national sovereignty and love to do it, give it all up to the Eurocrats there, that those people are now telling us that we need to spend billions and billions of euros on the national sovereignty of Ukraine?

Applause

It is a joke, honestly. And it’s a pretty sick, expensive and dangerous joke.

During a recent interview, I got asked by an interviewer, „Do you think you ever go too far? Do you think that you’re ever too radical?“ I thought about it for a second and I said „No. No, I don’t think I go too far.“

Applause

Truth must be told, ladies and gentlemen, I think we in Europe do not go far enough. I think that, if we really think about the organized structural attack on our civilization, that we don’t do enough.

Do we do enough to stop the attack on our families, on our continent, on our counties, on our religion?

When we hear about another murder, another stabbing of a young, innocent child, do we do enough?

When we know that our national sovereignty has been given up in less than a century to Brussels, do we do enough?

When we hear that Christian kids in Germany are now converting to Islam to fit in, do we do enough?

I don’t think so.

The totalitarian institute of the European Union needs to come down. Let me be clear, I don’t believe in reforms. When the foundation of your institution is rotten, and that is the case in Bussels, you can rebuild the house in top of it all you want, but it is still going to crumble. The only answer is the Tower of Babel needs to be destroyed.

Applause

Ladies and gentlemen, we are the daughters and sons of the greatest nations on earth, …

Applause

And we need to ask ourselves, what has happened to us? Where do we come from, and more importantly, where are we going? Our elites have declared a war on us, and now it is time for us to put on the full armour of God, fight back – and win.

Thank you very much

Applause

https://x.com/evavlaar?lang=de

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_dHHYwE3CQ (English original and English close-captioned)

Der Beitrag Das CPAC Hungary – eine Großveranstaltung der internationalen Rechten in Budapest, Ende April und eindringliche Rede von Eva Vlaardingerbroek erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

Part 1
"Conspiracy theory": origin of a term and its use
Where does the term "conspiracy theory" come from?
Who are conspiracy theorists and who are their enemies?
What is labelled a conspiracy theory today?
What favours the emergence of conspiracy theories

Part 2
Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists, fake news - origins, distinctions and significance
Today, the USA is often seen as the origin and hotspot of conspiracy theories - for obvious reasons
An example from the early days of the USA
Several examples from the recent past
"Conspiracy theories" arising from mistrust of the government, military and intelligence services
The mood in the USA

Part 3
Internationally disseminated or discussed "conspiracy theories"
Why conspiracy theories arise
A conspiracy theory fills a gap
Not only in the USA - mistrust and "conspiracy theories" are now becoming increasingly widespread throughout the Western world
Preliminary conclusion: The different types of conspiracy theories briefly categorised
Fighting words against the expression of opinion and free thinking
What this has to do with Donald Trump
Conclusion and evaluation

Internationally disseminated or discussed "conspiracy theories"

There are numerous topics and specialised areas that are either dismissed as conspiracy topics or conspiracy theories altogether. Or a large number of people are not convinced by the official accounts of some topics; many people question them.
These include some very controversial and significant topics. Some very different examples are listed here:

• New World Order - NWO
• Climate policy - man-made climate change and the impact of carbon dioxide
• "The German Question" - Consequences of the war, Germany's international legal situation since 1945
• Geoengineering, influencing the weather - HAARP and "chemtrails"
• Ukraine 2014 - "Maidan revolution" and war
• Blasting of the "North Stream" Baltic Sea pipelines, 2022
• CORONA pandemic and the mRNA vaccines
• Influence of large supranational organisations or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the WHO, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other, primarily transatlantic network organisations
• 9/11: The aeroplane attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, in particular the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centres and the WTC7 building gave rise to much speculation.
• The assassination of the then US President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, November 1963 (However, in recent years it has gradually become apparent that this topic is increasingly being dealt with in detail in major, recognised media, decades later. This can be recognised as an indication that theories condemned as conspiracy theories can turn out to be a serious subject of research).

There is much more that could be mentioned in this series.
On all these topics there are several articles from established media, research by "alternative media", judgements by courts, statements by governments or politicians, documents, scientific research and studies, books, film contributions and so on. But nevertheless, all of these matters together are something like "mined terrain" - each in its own way. If you look into them in detail, you run the risk of being seen as a crank or extremist, losing your scientific reputation or even getting into serious legal trouble.

Why conspiracy theories arise

Why this mistrust, the questions and speculation, how did and do assumptions and theories come about that paint a different picture to the one officially proclaimed? Why do many people see matters and questions as important that are deliberately bypassed in the major media or, above all, by political actors?
Of course, there is no short and simple answer to these questions. Several factors must come together or a chain of events must be seen to explain how theories emerge that give rise to a conspiracy by certain circles against the masses of the population, against the country, the world public, against peace, against the truth itself, and finally solidify in a usually lengthy process.

There are several possible explanations:

• Lack of reliable and credible information, official statements are incomplete, flimsy and even seem contradictory.
• Official accounts contain obvious errors, disregard important sources and obscure connections because something is actually being concealed. (For example, the content of official protocols or similar documents is deliberately withheld from the public).
• Mistrust of sources or public representations per se, because they have proven to be deliberately misleading and false in the past and therefore have little credibility.
• Last but not least, certain individuals, institutions or companies associated with the event in question are generally regarded by the general public as dubious or not very credible due to numerous scandals or dishonesty in the past. This is a significant fact that gives rise to mistrust and speculation.

"Trust is a delicate plant; if it is destroyed, it will not come back as soon as possible."

• Otto von Bismarck. German Chancellor, Empire from 1871

In addition, several small or large events, processes and statements - apparently - go well together, complement each other:
If something that happened recently is linked to an event that happened a long time ago and makes (supposed) sense and a conclusive connection, and if the search for further connections reveals possible links that form a picture like a jigsaw puzzle, at least a basis for further assumptions and theories is created.
If people or groups repeatedly appear in comparable events, and if developments can possibly be categorised in a larger whole, the idea suggests itself that there is less chance involved and that there really are connections.

The systematic search for correlations and connections between events is justified, indeed imperative for free-thinking, critical people and scientific research. Whether this search leads to "the one truth" is initially irrelevant. What matters is whether this enquiry or questioning is legitimate. And yes, it definitely is. After all, having assumptions, theories or hypotheses that are then investigated is also a method of serious science, regardless of the discipline. And when it comes to war and peace, freedom, democracy and fundamental rights, health and important scientific explanations, then asking questions, researching and publishing must not be criminalised or denigrated in a free and constitutional society, even if it involves one-sided or ideological ideas.
In a free country, citizens must not be prohibited from critically questioning and making assumptions, whether they are academic journalists, non-academic journalists, media professionals, bloggers or YouTubers. Everyone has the right to ask questions and analyse facts. If politicians or the media do not recognise this right by denigrating and criminalising people, they are first and foremost demonstrating their own undemocratic attitude.

It can therefore be argued that discrediting and denigrating people and certain views serves to ensure that topics and contexts are not investigated and that the public is not prepared to do so.

This begs the question: "Who has a massive interest in this and what goals are being pursued to suppress theories on certain topics and the questioning of narratives?"
However, these questions will not be explored here, as it would go too far and a separate conspiracy theory would have to be created at this point.

A conspiracy theory fills a gap

Where mistrust prevails and, on top of that, representations do not appear conclusive, there is a credibility gap. If this is not just the case for one individual, but if this credibility gap arises among many people for similar reasons, then well-founded assumptions or theories of individuals fall on fertile ground and spread rapidly. Not only that: these assumptions or theories are further developed collectively through further evidence or research.

In the days before the internet, the leading circles were able to limit these unwanted questions and theses through simple measures. In addition, the possibilities for dissemination and, above all, the speed of exchange were limited anyway.
Today, in the digital age, with the internet and social media, it is of course much more difficult for governments, political parties or state institutions and their associated media to tone down uncomfortable opinions, assumptions and theories. Strictly speaking, it is impossible, unless very restrictive and diverse measures are taken. For this reason, the measures against free exchange on the Internet have been gradually tightened for several years, as we can observe in the Western world. The reason given for this is to combat hate comments or hate speech and various forms of cybercrime and to prevent "disinformation". However, this is only one side of the coin; limiting the free exchange of information is obviously another key objective.

Not only in the USA - mistrust and "conspiracy theories" are now becoming increasingly widespread throughout the Western world

So far, we have mainly been talking about the USA, where many people do not believe official accounts of major events.
But what is the situation in other countries; what is the situation in Europe? Well, a development can be recognised in some European countries. Also based on mistrust of the leading media and official statements from politicians, more and more "alternative" accounts and background research are coming to light. In many European countries, major media outlets and established politicians are complaining that large numbers of people are believing "conspiracy narratives". Those who condemn this development should be aware of one thing: Mistrust and an assumed lack of credibility lead to people no longer accepting accounts from certain sources. Those who complain loudly and condemn citizens for their "belief in conspiracies" should prioritise thinking about why an increasing number of people no longer believe the major, often pro-government media. Where does the loss of trust in established politics come from? Why do many people become so suspicious that they look elsewhere for connections, background information and explanations for events and developments, but not to the leading media and influential party politicians? These are the key questions that need to be investigated.

And no, it is certainly not the increasingly criticised and condemned internet or social media that are the cause of the emergence and spread of counter-narratives and theses that contradict the widespread representations. Modern digital media are not the sole cause; they merely amplify and accelerate like a catalyst. However, it is precisely this accelerated exchange that has a political effect.
It should not be forgotten that there is also a large and rapidly increasing number of printed books and journals that deal with certain topics in depth and, in many cases, with extensive research. It is not easy to determine whether the investigations and conclusions are correct or whether they always correspond to the truth, given the complicated questions and fields of investigation. However, this is also not possible with the evening news or articles and contributions in the leading media. And from our own experience, it must be stated here that misrepresentations, the purposeful dissemination of one-sided accounts or the dissemination of misleading narratives are part of the everyday business of the leading German media and, above all, the public service media.
But the fact that entire subject areas and issues are being suppressed and pushed aside with all their might, and their investigation and discussion loudly condemned, makes it clear to many people that these topics and issues, as well as research into them, are obviously indeed controversial and important, otherwise no such effort would be made to suppress them, according to the logical conclusion.

People who do not want to be deprived of free thought, free information and a free exchange of opinions are increasingly coming up against limits in the supposedly free, liberal Western world.

Preliminary conclusion: The different types of conspiracy theories briefly categorised

It is important to distinguish between different main categories of conspiracy theories
I. Conspiracy theories or narratives that are deliberately spread by governments, heads of state and circles close to the government or influential political parties with the help of the major media available to them in a country
The aim of these usually strategically developed and disseminated conspiracy claims is generally to influence and control the mood and opinion-forming in the country or sphere of influence concerned (communities of states, "Western world") in the best possible way. One-sided representation by omitting background information and contexts is mainly used here as an obvious method.

II. "Conspiracy theories" that arise among the population due to mistrust of published accounts. These are fuelled by the fact that statements by governments, leading politicians or the leading media are perceived as untrustworthy.

These conspiracy theories under II. must be divided into two further subcategories:

1. Conspiracy theories that can be argued and factually substantiated
   These are often accompanied by numerous references and a detailed review of official statements, documents and verifiable events and statements. Their written form and source-based elaboration often meet scientific standards. At the very least, they are valid and thus lead many people to look into them. In some cases, they are often produced by academics, other knowledgeable people, whistleblowers and well-informed journalists in a reputable manner through extensive research. This type of alleged conspiracy theory can be described as a theory in the best scientific sense and leads to tangible theses and provides a basis for further research in this area. Science thrives on the establishment and substantiation of theories, the creation of theses and their verification using scientific methods. A theory is a set of hypotheses.
   Seen in this light, the term 'conspiracy theorist' should not be an insult or a pejorative, but rather an expression of respect. As this is now apparently increasingly being noticed by those who use this term as a 'killer word', other terms are increasingly being constructed, as explained at the beginning.
2. Conspiracy theories to which the term "conspiracy myths" or "fantasy" actually applies or even "faith" as a substitute religion - a substitute for religion They are recognisably world views characterised by fantasy, religious and transcendental exaggeration, including embellishments with fantasy and mythical creatures or extraterrestrials. These tales bear the hallmarks of modern myth and religious sentiment and can even include messianic saviours from real life. The justifiability and verifiability of the content by means of comprehensible sources and factual research methods are not possible for these narratives and are not important to the followers. A basis in the "real world" can nevertheless be traced.
   "QAnon" is an example of this. There are other examples. However, this area will not be listed here as it is not the subject of the considerations. It is important to distinguish these two from 1. and 2.

The fact that these two forms of conspiracy theories are often mixed together and mentioned in the same breath in the leading media or by leading politicians and celebrities means that everything that does not correspond to the statements or narratives of the established media and politicians is systematically labelled as unobjective and dubious. Through this deliberately undifferentiated equalisation of completely different representations and forms of explanation and, above all, subject areas, everything that does not fit in with the zeitgeist and mainstream narratives is generally classified as irrational and crazy. However, this also gives more and more critical minds the impression that the mainstream, which systematically proceeds in this way, is first and foremost making itself untrustworthy.

Fighting words against the expression of opinion and free thinking

The serious, theoretical debate about conspiracy theories, "alternative truths", "disinformation" and "fake news" is proving to be complex. Delegitimisation using such terms can be seen as a perfidious, anti-democratic method directed against fundamental rights in order to banish people and their thoughts or research and theories from public discussion and brand them as despicable.
This is what is also known as "Cancel Culture" - i.e. Culture of exclusionMethod of amortisation.
The procedure of using terms and verbal stigmatisation to pigeonhole people and their opinions with derogatory labels is systematic exclusion (EXCLUSION). This exclusion involves two main steps:

1. Terms are used to create negative associations (e.g. "conspiracy theorist"), i.e. negative mental connections are generated in the recipient of the message, and
2. Negative portrayals (the devaluation of topics and people) mean that people no longer want to engage with a topic and the people who deal with it. They fear being contaminated to a certain extent.
   At the very least, this method easily catches on with people who are easy to manipulate. The term "cancel culture", which is now often used, is also appropriate for this method of exclusion. However, as this term and its use have now become a political issue, even after a few changes, it is better to Exclusion of topics and Exclusion Find use.

Whether the use of this method has actually been expanded and systematised in recent years or whether people are becoming increasingly sensitive and attentive in this regard is not the subject of discussion here. This is about the fundamentals.

In reaction to this, more and more people are asking themselves fundamental questions: Why are leading social groups aiming to exclude others from public discourse with such verbal defence?
Do we perhaps lack our own arguments and factual options to counter the content of "conspiracy narratives" and "fake news" and thus effectively refute them?
Are the alleged "conspiracy theories" so explosive and sensitive for the ruling elites because they are so close to reality that they have to be combated in this way?
Why are (opposition) groups hindered in their expression of opinion through conceptual stigmatisation?
Why do political parties, governments, media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) go to increasing lengths to fend off certain views or criticism of conditions? Are they afraid that their own narratives, built up over the years, will easily fall apart; is it the concern that the statements and arguments of "conspiracy narrators" could dissuade many more people from "thinking correctly"?
If they are just talking nonsense, the mass of citizens should recognise it as such, shouldn't they?
This would make the "conspiracy narrators" insignificant per se.
And if these issues are being fought so resolutely, then there is probably something to them - they are obviously not so nonsensical, otherwise they would not be fought. This is considered further below.
One thing seems clear: this type of stigmatisation and exclusion is intended to deliberately narrow the corridor for publicly discussed topics and theses.
It is precisely the method, the determined and increasingly combative-aggressive way in which action is taken against statements, declarations and their authors, that gives rise to the suspicion that leading elites are very much afraid of losing their sovereignty of interpretation and opinion.

What this has to do with Donald Trump

The former US president and current presidential candidate, Donald Trumpis now seen by many, in the USA as well as in numerous other countries, as a fighter against the ruling elites, who are viewed with suspicion and mistrust. Donald Trump now has the nimbus of a fighter 'Alone against the system', against the established power structure and challenge him.
For taking on the aforementioned forces in their eyes, Trump is assured of hero status among some Americans, come what may. And it is precisely the attempts to make it impossible for Trump to run for president or to ruin his reputation through court cases and campaigns that are strengthening his support among large sections of the population. Indeed, these measures directed against Donald Trump confirm in the eyes of his supporters that a powerful system of established, ruthless power mongers is united against him.
Some go even further and see Trump as a saviour, a central figure in a change for the better.

Trump benefits considerably from the fact that he did not start any wars during his presidency and repeatedly emphasised that he wanted to end wars and prevent new ones. As president, he held talks with the heads of government of various countries instead of focussing on verbal and military armament. This strengthens his credibility, especially among pacifists. It is precisely Trump's desire for peace - whether apparent or real - that seems to earn him sympathy from large sections of the predominantly pacifist population. His campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again" expresses something that for the majority of Americans is a formula for restoring their country - a promising slogan for the future. US citizens want an end to the decades of impoverishment of the middle class, bankruptcies, deindustrialisation, drug misery, political instability, the funding of a global military apparatus with hundreds of military bases and an immeasurable over-expenditure on the military and war.

Donald Trump does not set great store by polished and well-chosen, politically correct language. He rumbles and often comes across as clumsy or fickle in his statements, but apparently few people blame him for this. For many, "Make America Great Again" expresses the hope of recreating and consolidating the USA and restoring order and justice in their own country. This also includes renewing the country's economy and industry instead of using globalisation and wars to help individuals achieve immeasurable wealth and impoverish the masses, as has been the case in recent decades under the ostensible liberals. It also expresses the desire to put the USA at the centre of things politically in a different way - not to present itself worldwide as the guardian of values and democracy while constantly waging questionable wars and destabilising other countries. Many would like to focus on their own country and the well-being of the US population.
Whether Trump will be able to hold his own as president if he is elected and whether he is serious about all his statements is, of course, unknown. In any case, the sympathy and trust that people place in him are understandable, provided that one is willing to take an honest look at the situation and developments in the USA and to analyse how citizens feel and the situation of the United States.
One thing must be emphasised: It is not clear whether Donald Trump has damaged democracy and divided society or whether, on the contrary, his success thrives on the US democracy that was damaged much earlier. Trump is accused of many things. However, the really big mistakes were made in the USA many decades earlier.

Conclusion and opinion

As explained above, the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" are fighting terms that are used to specifically marginalise people, topics and theories. Various derivations of "conspiracy theory" are also used for this marginalisation, such as "conspiracy narrative", "conspiracy myth", "conspiracy ideology" and "conspiracy fantasy". Related stigmatising neologisms are also used. Furthermore, marginalisation is carried out in an undifferentiated manner.
In the same breath, supposedly "right-wing" critics of party or government action are regularly accused of hostility towards democracy or endeavours against the state. The fact that criticised politicians brand the rejection of their policies and opposition per se as hostile to the state and democracy in turn undermines democratic principles themselves. When one's own party and political goals are equated with the state, this reveals a mixture of megalomania and a tendency towards totalitarianism. This is how oppositional activity is damaged. Opposition is systematically penalised in this way. Fighting opposition groups is a characteristic of totalitarian endeavours.

There is a lot of talk about media literacy. It is essential for media literacy not to let those who are part of the media business and who are obviously defending their power and authority of interpretation lead the way when choosing a medium and sources of information.
Media literacy and maturity - in the sense of Immanuel Kant's definition of "enlightenment" - includes being able to search for information independently and not being dictated to.

Immanuel Kant (German philosopher, 1724 to 1804) explained:

"Enlightenment is man's exit from his self-inflicted immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's intellect without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-inflicted if the cause of it is not a lack of understanding, but a lack of resolution and courage to make use of it without the guidance of another.„

* * *

It is important for citizens who want to gain knowledge in order to form their own opinion to differentiate between fantasies, propaganda and serious theories. This applies regardless of whether it is an offer from the large, established media or so-called alternative media. There is one thing media consumers should never do: let politicians and the major mainstream media tell them what the right source of information and the truth is and which sources they should never trust. In doing so, they voluntarily surrender their maturity - they remain in self-inflicted immaturity. Obedience and maturity are mutually exclusive.

Anyone who uses grand gestures and strong words to devalue the representations and views of others is pursuing a goal. And when party politicians, government circles and leading media - especially state-affiliated media organisations - tell us what is right and what is wrong, we need to listen up.

Opposition that is convenient and manageable for those exercising power is not real opposition. If only the comfortable opposition is tolerated and other points of view are fought against, this is tantamount to Synchronisation. Dealing with opinions and opposition in this way is against democracy and the rule of law. But what then remains of a political and social system when only certain opinions freely expressed or customised scientific research published and only tamed opposition is tolerated? The answer must be: it remains Totalitarianism.

And if a conspiracy theory really is a conspiracy theory in the best sense of the word and presents a comprehensive conspiracy, how do we deal with it? Let's assume that, in extreme cases, such a conspiracy theory appears implausible due to its scope and far-reaching nature, because it goes beyond the imaginable.
Imagine that the circumstances and alleged conspiratorial events described in this way - if they are real - may have a negative impact on your own life, may have considerable detrimental effects on social freedom, self-determination, war and peace, health, security, modest prosperity, the future of coming generations - do you close your eyes to this just because others say so? Would it be sensible to look the other way? Or is it perhaps better to take a second look and then make your own judgement? - Vigilance is always important.

This is certainly not a call to chase after every pipe dream and every new fantasy. No, on the contrary: the aim is to acquire the maturity to take a look for oneself and to form a picture of what is probable, plausible and significant and what, on the other hand, is certainly nonsense. It's about the simple basic principle: if I allow the influential and opinion multipliers, who are lobbyists in their own right, to explain to me what I can and cannot regard as right and true, I voluntarily remain immature.

If a complex thesis is based on a large number of well-researched sources and is therefore comprehensible, you must not allow lobbyists and propagandists to persuade you that it is all nonsense. We should at least consider the possibility that there are connections, events and processes that we did not even suspect before. If we allow ourselves to be persuaded that we should not concern ourselves with such matters, then we are no more acting responsibly than a trained animal.

There are also other aspects. As we have seen in recent years, numerous supposedly nonsensical conspiracy theories have subsequently been confirmed as true or realistic and what we were told emphatically by the mainstream in politics and the media has turned out to be untrue.
Those who doubted these official accounts and paid attention to "stupid conspiracy theories" were on the right side more than once. This has become particularly clear in recent months in Germany (and in some other countries) in connection with COVID-19 and the extensive measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus. It is gradually becoming apparent that the measures were in fact disproportionate and mostly ineffective, that many of them caused more damage than the disease itself and that many of the images that were supposed to scare us were not taken in context or were incorrectly commented on and certainly deserved to be labelled "fake news". It is now apparent that the supposedly helpful vaccinations, which we were forced to receive by means unworthy of a state governed by the rule of law, were virtually ineffective. However, numerous terrible vaccine injuries were caused, which were previously recognised or even predicted by medical experts. These medical professionals and those who initiated and evaluated investigations into the consequences of vaccination were ridiculed, criminalised and censored wherever possible.

The situation is similar with face masks, which were initially labelled as unnecessary and ineffective by the political and scientific mainstream until around April 2020. The background to this was that there were very few face masks in Germany, and the few that were available were to be reserved for medical staff. The fact that there was a shortage was concealed by claiming that they were ineffective anyway, which was true.

Initially, it was said that face masks were ineffective (which was the most honest thing to say), then there were calls for people to make their own face masks, or small domestic companies switched their production to masks. However, there was no business to be made for key people. In the second half of 2020, we in Germany were suddenly bombarded with studies and supposedly new findings that face masks were absolutely essential to prevent infection (of others) and stop the spread of COVID-19. Laws and regulations were passed that forced us to wear masks everywhere in public spaces, even children and sick people... - first simple medical masks, which were sometimes distributed in public places, then FFP-2 masks, which are not suitable for meditative purposes.

And those who opposed this, who had previous explanations for the ineffectiveness in mind or knew of new studies that also emphasised the health risks of the prescribed masks, were ridiculed. People who suspected or proved fraud and deception were ridiculed. But that was not all: it turned out that parliamentarians from some parties and their relatives were making a considerable profit from the import and sale of face masks. "Mask deals" were raking in tens of millions. It doesn't take long to wonder who was on the right side here: the suspicious or the gullible.

People were maltreated with nonsensical, unscientific and inhumane measures. The considerable risks that these new vaccinations entailed for many were hushed up and minimised. Scientists and experts from various disciplines - virologists, epidemiologists, psychologists, paediatricians, mathematicians and others - warned and predicted in great detail that the state bans and coercive measures were pointless and what would happen and what would occur. They were ostracised, ridiculed, censored and in some cases legally and socially cornered, lost their reputation or even their jobs and - and this is crucial here - what these people said was either hushed up, censored away or dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

Now, with hindsight, these admonishers and critics have been proved right; it is gradually becoming clearer that the alleged conspiracy theories were correct on a number of key points. A large number of victims of this propaganda are now suffering from severe vaccine injuries. Many of these vaccine injuries go unreported because doctors do not recognise or do not want to see the links between the COVID vaccination and the illness that often follows months later. In addition, the reporting system for vaccination injuries in Germany is questionable. Those affected also do not want to recognise a possible connection between a serious illness and the COVID vaccination. And so, especially in Germany, possible suspected cases of vaccination damage are often not reported to the responsible authorities (e.g. in Germany Paul Ehrlich Institute: Notification forms / Online notification - Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (pei.de)) are not indicated. A high number of unrecognised vaccine injuries are to be expected. The fact that vaccinating doctors now have to reckon with legal consequences because they did not adequately inform patients about the possible risks of the new, only provisionally authorised vaccines is also leading to a certain reluctance to report suspected cases. The issue of serious vaccine damage is being dealt with by numerous courts in Germany; the lawsuits are usually dismissed. Alleged corona vaccination damage in court (deutschlandfunk.de); Duty of doctors to provide information for Covid-19 vaccinations with an mRNA vaccine (beck.de) and others. For the plaintiffs concerned and their lawyers, it is almost impossible to prove "causality giving rise to liability".

There is a German proverb: "Trust is good - control is better." This can serve as a guideline when it comes to dealing with the media and news. A responsible citizen does not trust blindly, but tries to obtain certainty as far as possible. This is especially true when it comes to health, freedom or the question of peace and war. Restricting information options by denigrating and marginalising opinions and people by using defamatory terms primarily deprives citizens of information options.

Click here for part 1

and here to part 2.

Der Beitrag „Kampfbegriffe gegen die Opposition“ – Teil 3 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

Part 1
"Conspiracy theory": origin of a term and its use
Where does the term "conspiracy theory" come from?
Who are conspiracy theorists and who are their enemies?
What is labelled a conspiracy theory today?
What favours the emergence of conspiracy theories

Part 2
Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists, fake news - origins, distinctions and significance
Today, the USA is often seen as the origin and hotspot of conspiracy theories - for obvious reasons
An example from the early days of the USA
Several examples from the recent past
"Conspiracy theories" arising from mistrust of the government, military and intelligence services
The mood in the USA

Part 3
Internationally disseminated or discussed "conspiracy theories"
Why conspiracy theories arise
A conspiracy theory fills a gap
Not only in the USA - mistrust and "conspiracy theories" are now becoming increasingly widespread throughout the Western world
Preliminary conclusion: The different types of conspiracy theories briefly categorised
Fighting words against the expression of opinion and free thinking
What this has to do with Donald Trump
Conclusion and evaluation

Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists, fake news - origins, distinctions and significance

Today, the USA is often seen as the origin and hotspot of conspiracy theories - for obvious reasons

Conspiracy theories as well as gross lies have often been exposed in the United States of America in the past by Politicians or Media The aim is to achieve something specific in the public eye, to evoke a certain mood or to deliberately influence the majority of citizens in their behaviour. Influence the formation of opinion.

The historian and philosopher Richard Hofstadterwho was concerned with conspiracy fantasies, analysed in the first half of the 1960s in the essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (The paranoid style of American politics). In it, he explains how, in his opinion, a widespread "paranoid style" was used in American politics. Debates were thus emotionalised and objectivity eliminated. Hofstadter explains why he uses the term "paranoid style". Nevertheless, later criticism of his work repeatedly criticised the use of this term.

Throughout US history, suspicions and publicised conspiracy fantasies have been used to agitate against certain groups of people and to instil a state of insecurity or aversion in the masses of the population. Although he originally saw angry minds at work primarily on the political right and therefore focussed on this, Hofstadter identified the paranoid style among various actors in the USA, regardless of a particular political orientation. He explained that it is a style of thinking that is neither new nor necessarily right-wing.

An example from the early days of the USA

In the first half of the 19th century, the anti-Catholic movement in the USA, in the origins of which evangelical women played a major role. Individuals and newspapers led a campaign against Catholics, their institutions and further Catholic immigration with drastic conspiracy claims. This culminated in the 1850s. One newspaper article claimed: "It is a notorious fact that the monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil and religious institutions."

But nothing of this years-long firework display of agitation and insinuations against Catholics with fuelled hysteria and hatred remained in reality. More Catholics immigrated, for example from Ireland and Italy, and nothing conspiratorial happened - the USA was not attacked or even destroyed by Catholics and the Roman Church.

It often became clear to the attentive public in retrospect that claims made by politicians or the government, portrayals in the press, fuelled fears and delusionally conjured up imminent dangers consisted of exaggerations or had no basis in reality.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

- Abraham Lincoln. (USA) Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809 near Hodgenville, Hardin County (today: LaRue County, Kentucky); he died by assassination on 15 April 1865 in Washington D.C. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the USA from 1861 to 1865.

The lax handling of the truth or what is presented as such has a long tradition in the United States of America in political and media events. Propaganda lies have long been regarded as legitimate ways of influencing moods and elections and achieving other political or economic goals. It is probably no coincidence that in the USA Manipulation and Propaganda were scientifically investigated early on and subsequently utilised for marketing methods and product advertising.

A well-known pioneer in this field was Edward Bernays with his books "Crystallising Public Opinion" and "Propaganda" from the 1920s (1). Bernays and Ivy Lee were pioneers in the USA of the Propaganda theory and public relations research, but also drew on the preliminary work of other US and European authors. The work of the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon, "Psychology of the masses" , published in 1895, is regarded as the key to this field of research and the development of mass psychology and manipulation. Some of Le Bon's numerous works are still important today.

Footnote:

(1) Edward Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and a great-grandson of the Hamburg rabbi Isaak Bernays. His mother was Freud's sister Anna, his father Ely Bernays was the brother of Freud's wife Martha. (Source: Wikipedia - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

Several examples from the recent past

The Iraq war

The way in which the US government constructed a reason for the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003 is one such case of a "conspiracy theory" devised by the government in the recent past. By means of false claims and insinuations, the world public and US citizens were presented with the narrative that Iraq and, above all, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was (also) behind the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001.

When this could not be substantiated in the slightest and there was obviously no evidence to support it, the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was spread. Sceptical Europeans were insulted and contemptuously referred to as "old Europe" by the US government. The then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz as well as the Secretary of State Colin Powell were essentially responsible for these claims in order to invent a pretext for war. The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, strongly supported this approach, and Britain was later part of the so-called "coalition of the willing" that went to war against Iraq. As it turned out, these were lies that served as a pretext to start a war that violated international law and was ethically indefensible, and to find allies for it.

This was not the first and not the last time in US history that this was the case.

The Vietnam War

Vietnam had been scarred by a colonial war and proxy wars between various powers and a civil war since 1946 (1) and now became the theatre of a proxy war between the USA in support of South Vietnam against the Soviet Union and China on the side of communist North Vietnam.

This geopolitically and morally highly questionable entry into the war by the United States was also a catastrophe for the US military and for the hundreds of thousands of US soldiers who were killed and physically and mentally injured. Added to this was the fact that Atrocities and serious war crimes of the US military became public in this war. Politically and socially, the effects were also devastating for the United States. A large number of brutalised, mentally injured and disturbed Vietnam War veterans, who did not receive adequate treatment and care from the US Army, placed a considerable burden on society for decades.

With the alleged "Tonkin incident" in August 1964, the US leadership used a lie to create a pretext for entering the Vietnam War to enter. The United States presented itself as the victim of a military attack by communist North Vietnam on the ship "Maddox" in international waters. But not only that: the US Army was already operating on the side of South Vietnam before and during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, including as part of 'Operation Plan 34A', in the Vietnamese civil war against the largely communist North Vietnam.

In reality, the situation in this civil war was much more complicated than 'communist north versus good south'. US intelligence agencies shared the details in detail with government advisors. But no attention was paid to this on the government side.
Due to deliberate misdirection through false information, the US Congress passed the "Tonkin Resolution". She gave the President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to "use all means to repel Vietnamese attacks". Johnson initially made little use of this. In the subsequent election campaign, Johnson clearly positioned himself as being in favour of peace and against US hostilities in Asian countries. His opponent, Barry Goldwater, was openly in favour of an all-out war in Vietnam, which was rejected by the vast majority of US voters.

Johnson's campaign statements later turned out to be purely calculated and dishonest. He harboured war intentions just like his opponent Goldwater. The plans for the large-scale war were already in place. The Misleading the public unwilling to go to war in the USA was then systematically continued. And Johnson, in consultation with his advisors, now did exactly what he had ostensibly rejected during the election campaign: waging a large-scale war in Vietnam.

The publication of the "Pentagon Papers" by Daniel EllsbergThe leaks, which began in 1969, gradually revealed to the public the reprehensible way in which the President and the military were acting. Firstly, Ellsberg copied the 7,000 pages of secret material from the end of 1969 and made them available to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When Laos and Cambodia were also invaded and bombed by the US military, he handed the papers over to the New York Times in 1971.

"The Vietnam War began with a lie. It was triggered by an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on one of our warships stationed in the Bay of Tonkin. But it never happened. It was a lie. It was pure propaganda to start this terrible war. Sometimes history repeats itself."

- Dustin Hoffman. USA (from https://gutezitate.com/zitate/propaganda)

The Jewish philosopher and publicist Hanna Arendt dealt with the matter and firmly condemned the concealments, untruths and purposeful lies of the US leadership. It became clear to US citizens and the world public how governments and presidents had lied, deceived and defrauded citizens over a long period of time.

Daniel Ellsberg was thus an early whistleblower, long before the days of the internet. Richard M. Nixon, who had been US President since January 1969, made desperate and again illegal attempts to prevent the feared future publication of compromising documents. This subsequently led to the "Watergate affair", which also profoundly shook the credibility and acceptance of the government, its advisors and, above all, the US President. Trust in the office of president was irrevocably lost by many. Nixon finally resigned in August 1974, thereby avoiding impeachment proceedings.
The Vietnam War led to a serious and continuing US citizens' loss of confidence in politics and government and parts of the media, indeed the political system as a whole. This is important to know in order to understand later events and today's sensitivities in the USA.

Footnote:

(1) A brief history: Since the end of the Second World War, Vietnam had been engaged in a colonial war with the then colonial power FRANCE, which later developed into a civil war with French, Chinese and initially Japanese participation. The USA was already supporting France at great expense against the communist independence fighters at this time. The Indochina War was a major proxy war in which the USA was already involved at this time. At the "Indochina Conference" in Geneva in 1954, complex peace negotiations between the participating states of the People's Republic of China, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Vietnamese representatives, Laos and Cambodia resulted in a division into the (communist) North Vietnam and the southern part.
Without the financial and military support of the USA totalling several billion US dollars, France would have had to end the war prematurely in order to avert national bankruptcy. Various sides used torture during the Indochina War. The French used torture on a large scale, even after 1946, despite a ban on torture. During the Indochina War, an estimated one million Vietnamese lost their lives, the majority of them uninvolved civilians. Exact numbers of deaths on the various sides were not collected or published later. After the Geneva Peace Conference, the USA continued to exert direct influence and interfered heavily in internal affairs in Vietnam and Laos. In South Vietnam, a dictatorial regime followed under the Catholic Ngô Đình Diệm, who was installed and supported by the USA. A new civil war broke out against Diem's regime of terror. Initially as an armed uprising in South Vietnam, then with the participation of communist North Vietnam, a civil war developed in Vietnam.

The communist hysteria under McCarthy

In this context, the fear of communists, which was massively fuelled in the USA and by the Republican US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s, was one of them. McCarthy exaggerated his fuelling of communist panic; he repeatedly spoke of a conspiracy against the USA. He himself sensed communist activities in central offices of the US administration, the military, political parties and the government. Excessive measures, including unfounded suspicions and unjustified persecution of innocent people, were used by the state to harm numerous people. It turned out that this was a case of paranoia and fuelled insecurity and fears, not an actual large-scale communist conspiracy.

"Conspiracy theories" arising from mistrust of the government, military and intelligence services

The following are a few well-known examples of events for which theories or theses have emerged to refute official accounts. And one thing must be clear: These conspiracy theories may seem absurd to many, but there are nevertheless clues that cause many people to doubt or come up with their own explanations. And some conspiracy theories are being investigated worldwide today. It would therefore be reckless to immediately dismiss everything that contradicts official government accounts as nonsense.

The individual examples will only be dealt with briefly, as there is not enough space here to cover them in detail. Each would be an exhaustive topic in its own right. The focus remains on the USA. There are several reasons for this, above all the fact that the USA has a major influence worldwide with its foreign and geopolitical policy and the sensitivities of US citizens are of considerable importance.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour during the Second World War

The Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 claimed the lives of 2,403 Americans, 2335 marines and 68 civilians. In addition, around 1170 were wounded. Two large US warships were sunk and many were severely damaged. Well over 300 US fighter planes, which were also stationed in Pearl Harbour, were destroyed or damaged. The Japanese air attack was carried out by over 350 aircraft, which had been brought across the Pacific by aircraft carriers and attacked the bases on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu in two main waves. Several small Japanese submarines were also involved(1).

Although the Japanese army planned in advance with secrecy and no radio communication is said to have betrayed the action, there are indications that the US secret service nevertheless had prior knowledge of an imminent attack and President Rooseveld was informed.
Since then, there has been a theory that the Americans knew of an imminent Japanese attack. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is said to have let it happen without taking any precautions. In doing so, he hoped to gain a welcome excuse from the largely pacifist US population to enter the Second World War alongside Great Britain - with declarations of war against Japan and Germany. This was agreed with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This controversial thesis still stirs many emotions in the USA today. However, many believe that the President (and his advisors) probably calculated this way.

Two days after the Japanese air raid, the USA declared war on Japan. The German Empire and the USA declared war on each other; Italy also sent a declaration of war to the USA. As it turned out, the Japanese Empire had completely miscalculated its strategy in several respects and achieved the opposite of what was intended.

Footnote:

(1) The air attack on the US base in Hawaii is considered an attack because the Japanese side "neglected" - by mistake or deliberately - to send the USA an official declaration of war beforehand.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy

The probably better-known conspiracy theory concerns the deadly Assassination in Dallas John Fitzgerald KennedyThere are numerous speculations and assumptions about the circumstances of Kennedy's assassination and the motives and perpetrators. These include serious theories as to what may have happened instead of the official account and who may have been behind the assassination. Some of the officially declared course of events appears less credible. Witnesses made other observations, and things happened after the attack that understandably aroused suspicion. As a result, numerous speculations quickly sprouted that the assassination attempt on the president took place in a completely different way than officially declared. In the meantime, numerous articles and several books have been written and films made worldwide on the subject.

There are assumptions that it could have been a conspiracy from US leadership circles against their own president. The communist Lee Harvey Oswald, who was presented as the assassin, could therefore not have been the actual murderer. Oswald was shot dead in a police station in Dallas by the terminally ill Jack Ruby a few days after the assassination attempt on Kennedy, before a trial against him could begin. Ruby was a dodgy mobster (member of certain criminal gangs) and nightclub owner from Dallas. Statements he made in interviews after the trial against him reinforced the impression that there was probably something else behind the assassination than officially declared. However, Ruby may have been increasingly mentally disturbed and therefore not sane. The course of events and background to Kennedy's assassination have not been conclusively clarified to this day.

The 1969 US moon landing

Another major conspiracy theory from the USA concerns the moon landing. For a long time, some have doubted that the US moon mission actually took place. In the decades since 1969, numerous conclusive statements have been made by official bodies and the media to dispel doubts. Nevertheless, there are numerous people (in the USA and internationally) who believe that the US moon landing never took place, but that the whole thing was faked.

11 September 2001

The attacks on targets in the USA using hijacked airliners on 11 September 2001 were particularly significant, with assumptions and conspiracy theories circulating about the collapse of the Twin Towers, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, shortly after the shocking event. Here too, inconsistencies and events and processes that were difficult for outsiders to comprehend raised questions, aroused suspicion and gave rise to a wide range of speculation.

As is so often the case, there are also incomplete descriptions and unconvincing explanations and neglected aspects that are not addressed by the official, state authorities. This weakens credibility. Critical minds naturally recognise such incomplete accounts or contradictions. If there is also enough imagination and mistrust of one's own government, politics in general and the media, it is obvious that numerous conjectures and conspiracy theories will arise. In addition, the attacks of September 2001 served as the reason for the start of the war in Afghanistan.

On 11 September 2001, not only was the World Trade Center destroyed, but a plane was also steered into the Pentagon and another plane, UA 93, crashed after there was probably resistance from passengers and crew against the hijackers.

Without going into the details here, it must be said that the official reports and explanations to the public about these tragedies were incomplete and appear contradictory or not satisfactorily conclusive. Added to this is the scale of the shocking event.

___

At this point, of course, it is not possible to judge whether the official accounts are correct or not. The point is to show how doubts arise and for what reasons considerations are made that reject official, state explanations or other explanations are developed, assumptions about completely different courses of events and so on are worked out in detail.

The intention here is not to take a position on the examples mentioned or to make an assessment. Rather, the cases mentioned are simply intended to illustrate how great both the mistrust and the rejection of the US leadership is and how little credibility it is considered to have by a large number of people.

The mood in the USA

The mistrust of a large part of the population towards the government, state institutions, the military and large corporations as well as wealthy (and influential) individuals, which had built up over decades and was entirely understandable, runs very deep in the USA. Past experience had taught US citizens how inventive these ruling elites are when it comes to constructing a reason to start a war or enter an existing one, deploy troops worldwide and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

The fact that shortly afterwards the US leadership wanted to use the attacks of 11 September as justification to invade Iraq and then actually started the war in Afghanistan under this justification invited assumptions that these were engineered attacks. At the very least, they were carried out with the knowledge of secret services and were not prevented. The events fit a pattern: the USA is (allegedly) attacked and uses this as an opportunity to wage a war that apparently serves economic or geo-strategic interests. Apart from that, the USA has never been successful in its military actions since the Second World War. The USA has come out of every war with high losses, enormous costs and unachieved goals.

The attacks of 11 September 2001 were compounded by the fact that a large number of people in the western world had only had access to the internet for a few years at that time. This allowed various doubts, speculations and attempts at explanations to spread quickly and widely. As this dynamic was possibly still new to governments and secret services and caught them somewhat unprepared, there was not much to counter the speculation in 2001.

The image that many US citizens have long had of their political leadership, and which is becoming increasingly entrenched, clashes with their sense of morality and their expectations of a leading elite. The demand for morality and a sense of justice among the broad mass of the population should not be underestimated. They do not want immoral liars and warmongers as representatives and decision-makers, but a leadership elite that at least fulfils the basic moral standards that apply to society as a whole.

Over the past decades, US citizens have lost confidence in politics and in the government's ability and willingness to work for their good and for their state.

A Article from "The Economist" deals with the mistrust of the US-Americans.

Interesting in this context is the detailed study by the Pew Research Centre: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/americans-views-of-government-decades-of-distrust-enduring-support-for-its-role/

Here you get to Part 1 of "fighting words against the opposition".

Part 3 will be published shortly. Please be patient.

Der Beitrag „Kampfbegriffe gegen die Opposition“ – Teil 2 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

The terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" have been used frequently in the media and public debates in recent years. This is not equally the case in all Western countries. In some countries, these or similar terms are used with the aim of restricting the formation of opinion.
When a representation or an entire subject area is labelled a conspiracy theory, the intention is to express contempt and disdain for both the topic or viewpoint in question and the people who deal with it. It sends the message: "These people and their representations and views are dubious and nonsensical!"

Meanwhile, for those who want to use this term to stigmatise others or present a thesis as implausible, "theory" is too weak in its pejorative effect. So now terms such as "conspiracy narrative", "conspiracy ideology", "conspiracy fantasy", "conspiracy myths" or even "rubbish narrator" or similar are also used.
Leading media, leading politicians of the established parties as well as publicists, academics and non-governmental organisations (NGO: abbreviation of the internationally used English term) use these terms to devalue. Obviously, this method of stigmatisation is used to defend certain narratives or dogmas in order to prevent them from being questioned.
The topics and areas of life affected by this are becoming more numerous; the taboo zones for thinking and expressing opinions are being expanded by means of such methods.
This method is a modern form of censorship: citizens are allowed to say anything, but not with impunity. Increasingly, you have to expect consequences if you deal with or question certain issues in the "wrong way": citizens who step out of line sometimes have to reckon with blocked social media channels, loss of reputation, social, professional or even legal measures as consequences.

A serious examination of the history and origins of "conspiracy theories" and the use of this term requires that we go back into history. Only an examination of earlier events and methods can explain what is happening today. As is so often the case, it is necessary to go into the background in order to understand what is happening today.

Due to the scope of the topic, the article is divided into three parts.

Contents

Part 1
"Conspiracy theory": origin of a term and its use
Where does the term "conspiracy theory" come from?
Who are conspiracy theorists?
What is labelled a conspiracy theory today?
What favours the emergence of conspiracy theories

Part 2
Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorists, fake news - origins, distinctions and significance
Today, the USA is often seen as the origin and hotspot of conspiracy theories - for obvious reasons
An example from the early days of the USA
Several examples from the recent past
"Conspiracy theories" arising from mistrust of the government, military and intelligence services
The mood in the USA

Part 3
Internationally disseminated or discussed "conspiracy theories"
Why conspiracy theories arise
A conspiracy theory fills a gap
Not only in the USA - mistrust and "conspiracy theories" are now becoming increasingly widespread throughout the Western world
Preliminary conclusion: The different types of conspiracy theories briefly categorised
Fighting words against the expression of opinion and free thinking
What this has to do with Donald Trump
Conclusion and evaluation

Part 1

"Conspiracy theory": origin of a term and its use

Where does the term "conspiracy theory" come from?

The philosopher Karl Popper (born 1902 in Vienna, died 1994 in London) used in his book 'The open society and its enemies' Volume 2, 'False Prophets: Hegel, Marx and the Consequences' (written in New Zealand, published in English 1945, in German 1958) the concept of "Conspiracy theory of society". In doing so, he largely gave the term conspiracy theory the meaning it has today. The term "Conspiracy Theory" (English for "conspiracy theory") has a different meaning and can be found in the 'Oxford English Dictionary' several decades before the publication of Popper's book, mainly in a legal context.

Following the reporting on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the term "conspiracy theory" gained currency in the USA. At that time, the term was used to dispel mistrust and plausible doubts about the official accounts of the assassination and the perpetrators, which, as is well known, has not been fully successful to this day.
Since this time, explanations and interpretations of major events have been labelled as conspiracy theories, primarily in the USA, which identify a group or institution that may be acting in conspiracy for a specific purpose. These conspirators therefore have an interest in the event, which can be placed in a larger context if necessary, and they have the means to plan and implement conspiratorial behaviour in advance.

In the USA in particular, there had long been a considerable mistrust of politics and business groups as well as exceptionally wealthy families - i.e. the ruling elite.

Who are conspiracy theorists?

As will be explained below, these questions cannot be answered simply and in general terms. Conspiracy theorists can operate in different places or positions. For decades, the term "conspiracy theory" has been applied to critical citizens or publicists who doubt official accounts and who appear with counterstatements to government and media (officially disseminated) statements.

However, the authors and earlier creators of proven conspiracy narratives and similar claims can be identified elsewhere: Governments or Pro-government circles develop conspiracy theories (allegations, insinuations) and put them out into the world. And this has demonstrably been done many times.
In doing so, they make use of the various distribution channels available to them. In the past, these were media houses, large press publishers, press agencies, radio stations and, of course, press conferences, which can be used by influential politicians and lobbyists. Today, other dissemination options are being added.

Press, media companies in general can also be authors or at least spread conspiracy claims. These cases often existed in the past, in the time before the Internet.
Since the spread of the internet, the situation has obviously become more complex, more flexible, and the emergence and spread of conspiracy theories and counter-narratives to the official narrative is happening at breakneck speed. Bloggers, suspicious citizens, imaginative minds, investigative journalists, publicists, scientists, whistleblowers, opposition activists of various kinds, fraudsters and confused personalities... since around the year 2000, all these people and groups have been able to disseminate their research, findings, assumptions and attempts at explanation, insinuations, fantasies or even delusional ideas, discuss them with numerous others and inspire each other.

And if all this seems frightening, it doesn't necessarily have to be a disadvantage. However, on the one hand, the Internet makes the situation more confusing, much more diverse and more complex. On the other hand - and this is crucial: it is much more difficult for the ruling elites and the large media groups to spread their own narratives and stories and effectively consolidate them in the public sphere in order to manipulate the masses (almost without resistance). Counter-narratives and opposing opinions immediately emerge on the internet and various social media, with specific events often underlined by mobile phone videos and eyewitnesses. The concealment and omission of information or one-sided, manipulative representations also come to the attention of some citizens more quickly - leading media are thus put under pressure. We have noticed this more frequently in Germany in recent years. The digital media therefore also fulfil an important task.

As a result, these are Internet in general and various Social media in particular to the Enemy image of leading politicians and Media groups have become. For the established, large media companies, the digital media not only represent economic competition, but also incalculable competition in terms of content presentation and opinion-forming. The "old media" and the leading elites (of the Western world), who are often closely associated with them, are no longer getting through to a large number of citizens with their widespread dogmas and narratives in the way they used to. In many areas, the majority no longer follow them and increasingly distrust the previously dominant media.

What is labelled a conspiracy theory today?

Conspiracy theorists" or "conspiracy narrators" as well as "aluminium hat wearers" and so on are people who hold views that clearly contradict the explanations, representations and dogmas of the Western ruling elites and contradict their explanatory patterns. (The definition of the increasingly controversial term "elite" will not be discussed here). This will initially be considered irrespective of whether this view or representation is factual, logical, comprehensible and source-based or whether it is confused, irrational, contradictory and cannot be factually substantiated.

Views or even detailed, factual treatises that contradict the ruling elites and their spokespeople or reveal completely different backgrounds and contexts are labelled as conspiracy theories, conspiracy narratives or conspiracy myths ("disinformation", "hate speech"...) and so on. It does not matter how detailed, verifiable and well-founded this position is put forward.

For many of these controversial topics, which are dismissed by the Western media or leading politicians as conspiracy narratives, there are books with references and a systematic structure that meet scientific standards or have been written by experts. Detailed treatises in digital media, magazines, books and lectures are also increasingly being labelled with derogatory terms.
These are mostly topics from politics, society, power and domination structures and the economy. This form of marginalisation promotes the often lamented division of society.

In the case of the corona pandemic and the controversy surrounding vaccination, it is clear that, in a similar way, scientific observations and research are declared to be "correct" and "recognised" science on the one hand, while other professionally qualified scientific knowledge and explanations are dismissed as false, "fake news" or "conspiracy theory" and scientists are discredited in this way. It is even censored or criminalised. We are familiar with similar behaviour in the debate about climate change and its causes. An open approach to science and freedom of research looks different. Not to mention freedom of opinion or freedom of information. The systematic denigration of statements and people using such terms is in stark contrast to constitutional fundamental rights - indeed, it contradicts the principles of the rule of law.

Today, "conspiracy theory" is used almost exclusively as a pejorative term and verbal defence against oppositional views and publications. And as I said, even dissenting findings or explanations in specialised scientific fields can be seen as opposition. In the so-called Western world, we are experiencing less and less of an objective debate with opposition; instead, opposition is met with the will to destroy.

In this way, leading elites and their mouthpieces want to delegitimise and denigrate criticism of themselves in order to avoid a serious, substantive debate. It is naturally assumed that what is labelled a conspiracy theory has no truth content whatsoever and is to be regarded as fundamentally false.

The censorship scissors for thoughts and topics must be implanted in people's minds. This is what "fighting words" are for.
From time to time, the term "alternative truth" is used to dismiss and discredit views or reasoned representations.
These attributions, particularly in Germany, have been supplemented for several years by the discussion about "fake news", "hate speech" and "disinformation", whereby these terms are mixed together at will. Anything that contradicts the world view conveyed by state-run public media and leading party politicians is condemned and devalued. In addition, there are new laws from the EU and the state that serve as measures against the expression of opinions. State-organised and financed censorship forces are scouring certain social media. However, if you look at what is declared as "hate speech", for example, you realise that in many cases it is not really about hate messages, but about oppositional criticism or expressions of opinion that are displeasing to leading politicians and the media close to them.

"They don't ban hate speech. They ban the speech they hate."

• Author not known. This quote, which probably originates from a US Twitter comment, is often attributed to Elon Musk. Musk does not distance himself from the content of the statement, but is not the author. The original is said to read: "They don't ban hate speech; they ban speech they hate."

Another fighting term, mainly in Germany, has long been "right-wing" and various associations with it. For decades, everything that can be remotely described as politically right-wing has been deliberately demonised.

In the same breath, the outlawed conspiracy narrative (in Germany) is now often specifically labelled as "right-wing" or "right-wing extremist" at the same time. "Right-wing conspiracy theory" is now the oft-repeated term. Whether people with a right-wing political orientation are actually behind certain opinions or whether a right-wing orientation is assumed is recognisably irrelevant(1).
Two words declared to be negative are merged into one term. And makes it seem superfluous to deal objectively with content and arguments.

As opposition and dissent to the mainstream in politics and the media has increasingly been labelled as "right-wing" or "extreme right-wing" and even indiscriminately as "Nazi" in recent years, the aim is to create a subtle mental link between the "right-wing", which has been demonised for decades, and the "conspiracy believers". This easy-to-see-through method of denigration and marginalisation really does catch on with a large number of unsuspecting citizens.

(1) For example, countless demonstrations against the CORONA measures took place in Germany in 2020 and 2021. These protective measures were seen by many citizens as well as lawyers, doctors and other experts as a disproportionate restriction of fundamental rights. A colourful mixture of people took part in these demonstrations, as I was able to see for myself in several cases. Conversations with participants have clearly shown that this is not about "right" or "left", but about the cause itself - about resistance to new laws and government measures that undermine fundamental rights. Here, people demonstrated side by side regardless of their political orientation. Citizens with different voting behaviour and many who were previously apolitical have come together. The media and leading German politicians generalised that these demonstrators were right-wing and against the state.

What favours the emergence of conspiracy theories

When so-called conspiracy theories arise, the primary cause is deep-seated mistrust. Mistrust of politics, state institutions, the media and various lobby groups is also fuelled by such lies, which have a lasting effect over generations. Constructing conspiracy lies has always been a means of US policy, especially in foreign and war policy. This will be discussed in detail in Part 2 of this paper. Originally, this did not come from the population, but was devised and spread by governments, state agencies or large media organisations.

An increasingly growing proportion of the US population is no longer prepared to accept emotionalised propaganda lies from its government apparatus unquestioningly. What applies to US citizens in this respect is increasingly true for people in almost all countries of the Western world: a great many people trust the US government, presidents, government advisors, US intelligence agencies, think tanks and large corporations with everything, but little that is good. Instead, they are associated with lies, deviousness, war, destruction, arbitrariness, cold-heartedness and calculation, contempt for humanity and moral depravity.
These harsh but now widespread views of the USA and its leadership are the result of previous actions.
It is therefore hardly surprising that many of the various "conspiracy theories" and expressions of mistrust circulating around the world are linked to the USA and its ruling elites.

For some years now, there has been a loss of trust and rejection not only towards the leadership of the USA. In almost all Western countries, mistrust and rejection of their leadership elites is on the rise. This has already been explained here using Germany as an example. This is being countered with further restrictions on critical citizens. Social division is also increasing.

Some examples should in part 2explain in a comprehensible way how mistrust has arisen and why it is apparently on the rise.

Part 3 will also be online shortly.

Der Beitrag „Kampfbegriffe gegen die Opposition“ – Teil 1 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

A lecture in the wording

The following text reproduces a lecture given by the German author Wolfgang Effenberger at the aforementioned event "Peace without NATO" in Cologne in November 2023. The lecture is reproduced here with the consent of the speaker.

In brief about W. Effenberger:

Wolfgang Effenberger was born in Lohne in southern Oldenburg in 1946, a few weeks after his parents were expelled from Silesia. At the age of 18, he began officer training in the German army. After studying civil engineering, he became a pioneer captain. After 12 years of service, Effenberger studied political science and higher education (civil engineering and maths) in Munich and taught at the University of Applied Sciences for Civil Engineering until 2000.

Since then, he has published books and articles on recent US history and geopolitics. You will find a link to a detailed personal description and bibliography at the bottom of the page.

*

Note: The Highlighting have been inserted here, and the additions in square brackets [...] are explanations for easier understanding.

____

The speech

Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty (ex-Article 17 of the EU Constitution) makes military missions "for the defence of the Union's values and in the service of its interests" a reality. For me, this means in plain language: wars of aggression to protect economic and strategic interests.

My conclusion at the time: the USA continued the Cold War because the fall of the Berlin Wall had only achieved one of its two geopolitical goals: The first goal was undoubtedly the victory of capitalism over socialism. But the second goal is only now becoming clear in the course of current US policy.

It is the unchallenged supremacy of the USA in Eurasia. The aim is to transform the world into a post-nation-state order under US hegemony. This goal still exists and is to be achieved with a FULL-SPECTRUM-DOMINANCE.

On 30 May 2000, the US Department of Defence published the Joint Vision 2020 strategy paper, which contains guidelines for "superiority on a broad front" of the US armed forces in order to be able to counter threats around the globe in 2020. This amounts to the status of a FULL-SPECTRUM DOMINANCE in an armed conflict. The fight against every possible enemy is to be achieved with all necessary forces and measures, either alone or together with allies. (1)

In addition to land, air and sea, this superiority on a "broad front" also includes space, the electromagnetic level and information warfare (cf. cyberwar).

Only if these conditions are met can "dominance across the entire spectrum" be realised in accordance with the Joint Vision 2020 military doctrine. This requires a gigantic military budget. The US military budget for 2023 has been increased by 90 billion dollars to 858 billion. But 12 billion to combat child poverty remains blocked. (2) By way of comparison, Russia will spend 86.4 billion euros in 2023 and 109 billion euros in 2024 (3)

"I have said before," said Harold Pinter in his speech when accepting the Nobel Prize in 2005, "that the United States is now laying its cards on the table with complete candour. That is the case. Its officially declared policy is now defined as 'Full Spectrum Dominance'. That's not my term - it's theirs. 'Full Spectrum Dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all accompanying resources."

I have subdivided my presentation:

The road to the Second World War
Setting the course from 1945-1950
Wolfowitz Doctrine
Strategy papers 1994-2022
Official statements 2023
Outlook

At the end of 1934, following the failure of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal plans and the simultaneous start of the development of the "Rainbow" war plans, fears of a new war spread in the USA. Under the chairmanship of Senator Gerald P. Nye, an investigative committee under the innocuous name of the Munitions Investigation Committee began its work on the reasons for going to war in 1917.

In the course of the carefully conducted investigations, the influential US private banker J.P. Morgan Jr. and the US entrepreneur Pierre du Pont were also questioned.

In conclusion, the committee convincingly demonstrated that bankers and defence industrialists had exerted a strong influence on US foreign policy before and during the war, in addition to price fixing, and had thus "tricked" the country into the war. (4) Incidentally, in the 2008 US election campaign, the name Morgan appeared among Obama's biggest donors - just behind Goldman Sachs and ahead of Citigroup. (5)

So Obama's statement to the officer candidates at West Point in 2014 comes as little surprise: "I believe with every fibre of my being in American exceptionalism. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it's our willingness to affirm them through our actions." (6)

In his book Full Spectrum Dominance, published in 2009, the German-American author William Engdahl, founder of a consultancy firm for geopolitical strategic risks for companies, sheds light on an astonishing event in 1939, when a small elite circle of specialists came together in the New York Council on Foreign Relations in the utmost secrecy.

Quote: "With generous funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the group set about sketching out the details of a post-war world. In their view, a new world war was imminent, from whose ashes only one country would emerge victorious - the United States. Their task, as some of the members later described, was to lay the foundations for a post-war American empire - but without calling it that. It was a skilful deception that initially led much of the world to believe American claims of support for "freedom and democracy" around the world." (7)

Developments after the end of the Second World War seem to confirm Engdahl's assertions: Already in the last year of the Second World War, the founding year of the United Nations [UN], the war plans of British and American generals against the Soviet Union began to take concrete shape.

On 1 July 1945, Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to push back the then Soviet Union militarily and re-establish an independent Poland. (8) To this end, he had General Hastings Ismay draw up the "UNTHINKABLE " plan of attack - he was to become the first Secretary General of NATO. However, under pressure from Stalin, the German soldiers were disarmed and taken prisoner on 23 May 1945. The German successor government residing in Flensburg was arrested. At the beginning of September 1945, US President Harry S. Truman commissioned General Eisenhower with "Operation TOTALITY". With 20 to 30 atomic bombs, 20 Soviet industrial cities were to be destroyed in one fell swoop. (9) Such plans were constantly refined.

    On 14 May 1947, Churchill spoke in the Albert Hall of a United Europe as a step towards world government

    On 15 May 1947, Truman announced his doctrine to contain the further expansion of the Soviet Union.

    The Marshall Plan followed on 6 June 1947.

The aim was to strengthen Western Europe against the Eastern Bloc and to open up sales markets for the American economy, which was still overheated from the war. By accepting the aid, the countries had to cede their financial sovereignty to Washington - this was the beginning of the economic colonisation of Europe, which did not cost the USA much. Between 1949 and 1952, West Germany received a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars worth around 6.4 billion DM [German marks]. This loan was repaid on the basis of the London Debt Agreement of 12 February 1953 with interest and repayment by 1962 in the amount of DM 13 billion. (10)

On 26 July 1947, the "National Security Act" was passed for the military penetration of the world, one of the most important laws in US post-war history. It is still the basis of global US military power today. The aim was to make Europe fit for war against the Soviet Union.

On 23 April 1948, William Fulbright founded the "American Committee for a United Europe". Former intelligence chief General William Donavan acted as executive director, and CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles became his deputy. Why two intelligence professionals at the helm? The Marshall Plan was intended as part of the preparations for war against the Soviet Union. The supposedly non-governmental committee was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and government-affiliated business groups. (11)

NATO was officially founded on 4 April 1949 as a defence alliance against the Soviet Union. The first Secretary General of NATO and chief planner of Unthinkable, Lord Ismay, casually formulated NATO's task: "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down". (12) The Alliance Treaty stated that economic reconstruction and economic stability were important elements of security - hence the Marshall Plan.

On 19 December 1949, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff adopted the "DROPSHOT" war plan to enforce the war aims of the United States against the USSR and its satellites. Of course, it was intended to look as if there was no other way. The official threat scenario was therefore formulated as early as 1949: "On or about 1 January 1957, war has been forced upon the United States by an act of aggression by the USSR and/or its satellites."

However, when Sputnik orbited the earth in 1957, the war plans had to be revised and the date for Dropshot was postponed. In Moscow, however, the plan remains unforgotten. The noble goals proclaimed with the founding of NATO stood in stark contrast to the war plan for the nuclear annihilation of the Soviet Union that was drawn up at the same time. The four events of 1949 mentioned above must be understood as steps towards a NATO-orientated European Union, which was created in absolute secrecy. Only later propaganda campaigns presented the European project as a work of peace. And these campaigns continue to this day.

On 9 May 1950, the Schuman myth was born: the birth of the Coal and Steel Union. In 1953, Thomas Mann had recognised the tendency of the US administration to treat Europe as an economic colony, a military base, a glacis in the future nuclear crusade against Russia, as a piece of earth that was of antiquarian interest and worth visiting, but whose complete ruin they would not give a damn about when it came to the battle for world domination.

With the "National Security Directive 54" (NSDD-54) of 2 September 1982, an instrument was created with which the entire Soviet bloc could be subversively undermined.

Here, the sea eagle was first allowed to shoot its arrows and then wag its palm: In addition to destructive operations ("undermining the military capacities of the Warsaw Pact"), economic incentives were created, above all the prospect of loans and cultural-scientific exchange. (13)

In the Middle East, politics was made with the palm leaf. The Senator from Delaware announced on 5 June 1986: "It is the best investment of 3 billion dollars that we have made. If there were no Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect its interests in the region." (14)

On 31 December 1991, the Soviet Union was a thing of the past. Free market capitalism" had triumphed over "state socialism". Peace dividends, however, were rejected by the West.

Instead, every part of the US economy was linked to the future of this permanent war machine. For those parts of the US establishment whose power had grown exponentially through the expansion of the national security state after the Second World War, the end of the Cold War would have meant the loss of their raison d'être.

This elite rejected the possibility of gradually dissolving NATO, just as Russia had dissolved the Warsaw Pact, and fostering a climate of mutual economic co-operation that could make Eurasia one of the most prosperous and thriving economic zones in the world.

On 28 October 2014, Pope Francis declared thats: "We are in the middle of World War IIIbut in a war in instalments. There are economic systems that have to wage war in order to survive. So they produce and sell weapons. (15)

The neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz drafted the guidelines for defence planning as Deputy Secretary of Defence - the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. It became the trigger for NATO to be used as an instrument of bloody aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya after the Cold War. The coup d'état prepared by the West in Ukraine in 2014 was also a product of the doctrine.

In August 1994, the "Training and Doctrine Command 525-5" emphasised the stringency and continuity of the American quest for hegemony under the title Full-scale operations for the strategic army in the early 21st century clearly defined. One of the high-calibre authors was Paul Wolfowitz, advisor to George W. Bush and deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, an important promoter of the "war on terror", with which Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran were to be subjected to the USA's claim to hegemony. All of this serves the goal of unipolar world domination and the "full spectrum dominance" of the US military, and much of it has been successfully implemented to date. This document describes a dynamic era, a world in transition.

Instead of fighting communism, in the 21st century we will have to take action against national and religious extremism. While we had permanent allies in the 20th century, in the 21st century they are only temporary allies.

The US army should adapt to this and take two premises into account: "rapid technological change and the reorganisation of geostrategy". The modern theatre of war relies on advanced technology such as combat robots and drones as well as on "non-nation forces" and mercenary armies that do not have to abide by any laws and are paid according to measured success. According to the strategy paper, the path to the intended war leads via the targeted destabilisation of the state, in which the aim is to bring about a "regime change" for one's own benefit.

An important instrument here is the "Operations other than War" (OOTW) - i.e. operations from the Financial and cyber warfare about the use undercover special units until Drone warfare and all facets of Shadow wars.

The stages of escalation described in the document can be clearly observed in Ukraine: Turmoil (Maidan), crisis (Slavyansk) and conflict (Crimea). The final stage would then be war, which became a reality on 24 February 2022.

In 1999, NATO waged a war of aggression against Yugoslavia without a UN mandate, in violation of international law and the UN Charter. From then on, the crisis intervention role was permanently anchored without a UN mandate.

Here too, geostrategic interests of the USA were the real reason! The War against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was conducted in order to revise a wrong decision made by General Eisenhower during the Second World War. According to representatives of the US State Department at the Bratislava conference on the Balkans and NATO's eastward expansion at the end of April 2000, the stationing of US soldiers there had to be made up for strategic reasons.

The aim was to transform the spatial situation between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia in line with US objectives for the upcoming NATO expansions. Poland was to be surrounded to the north and south by democratic states as neighbours, Romania and Bulgaria were to secure the land connection to Turkey and Serbia was to be permanently excluded from European development. (16) The US camp built shortly after the war in Yugoslavia Bondsteel secures the US military presence from Kosovo to Kashmir for 99 years.

The terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 empowered the American president to declare a permanent war against an enemy that was everywhere and nowhere, that supposedly threatened the American way of life, and to justify laws that destroyed that way of life in the name of the new global war on terror.

In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq with the false claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, this deception had had its day.

What was the real aim of the Pentagon's relentless wars? Was it, as some have surmised, a strategy to control the world's vast oil reserves at a time of future oil shortages? Or was there a completely different, even more grandiose intention behind the US strategy since the end of the Cold War?

Thomas Barnett's books provide insight into this: the touchstone for the question of whether the aggressive military agenda of the two Bush administrations was an extreme deviation from the core of American military foreign policy or, on the contrary, formed the core of the long-term agenda, was the presidency of Barack Obama.

After accepting the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of 2009, he expanded the wars and made drone terror his trademark. The coup on the Maidan in February 2014, which violated international law, was orchestrated by him and Biden.

A good six months later, the US strategy paper "TRADOC 525-3-1 Win in a complex world 2020-2040" (17) was presented.

It propagates the "full spectrum dominance" of the USA on land, at sea and in the air. As the most important Opponent the Rival powers China and Russia called. (18)

Russia is accused of acting imperially and expanding its territory. A grotesque accusation in view of the expansion of NATO and the "colour revolutions" in the former Soviet republics, which, however, is used to justify the necessity of stationing American ground troops in Central Europe. In second place are opposing "regional powers" - e.g. Iran.

Now it's all about what the enterprising longstanding US Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski as early as the end of the 1990s in "The only world power": The domination of the Eurasian landmass.

This goal has been achieved since 4 December 2014 with the US Resolution 758 official US state doctrine, which has been uncritically supported by the European vassals since 15 January 2015. Resolution 758 was passed with a speed that is unusual in the history of the American legislative process. After just 16 days, it was adopted by 411 votes to 10!

On the very day the resolution was passed, the veteran congressman Ron Paul described it on his homepage as "one of the most evil laws" and as Declaration of war on Russia. He saw this 16-page bill as pure war propaganda that would make even neo-conservatives blush.

This resolution has been supported by the European public since 15 January 2015, completely unnoticed. On this day, the European Parliament largely adopted US Resolution 758 with a 28-point resolution in which the EU Parliament condemns the "terrorist acts" in Ukraine and calls on the EU to develop a plan against the Russian "information war" and to help Ukraine expand its defence capacities.

Four weeks later Merkel [former German Chancellor], Hollande [former President of France], Poroshenko [President of Ukraine from 7 June 2014 to 20 May 2019] and Putin [Russian President] negotiated the Minsk peace agreement. And almost a year ago, former Chancellor Angela Merkel let the astonished world public know: "... the Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It has also used this time to become stronger, as we can see today". In response, the Russian president was outraged in his New Year's address: "The West lied about peace, but prepared aggression and is now openly and shamelessly admitting it." Every basis of trust has been destroyed.

The dependence of the EU on Washington was ruthlessly exposed by the former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, one day after Brexit, on 24 June 2016: "The EU and NATO are evil institutions created by Washington to destroy the sovereignty of the European peoples." This statement made me "Black Book EU & NATO" has prompted. [Wolfgang Effenberger: "Black Book EU & NATO. Why the world cannot find peace"; first edition 2020]

At the end of October 2022, the Biden administration adopted the new National Security Strategy.

President Joe Biden wrote in the foreword: "Since the first days of my presidency, I have argued that our world is at a turning point. How we respond to the enormous challenges and unprecedented opportunities we face and confront today will determine the direction of our world and impact the security and prosperity of the American people for generations to come. The 2022 National Security Strategy lays out how my Administration will use this pivotal decade to advance America's vital interests and position the United States to outmanoeuvre our geopolitical competitors, overcome common challenges, and put our world firmly on the path to a brighter and more hopeful future." (19)

Many can only see these sentences as a declaration of war on the rest of the world - especially Russia, North Korea, Iran and China.

The top strategic priorities set out in the security paper are: "Reducing the growing multifaceted multidisciplinary threat from China, deterring the threat from Russia to Europe". This is followed by North Korea and Iran. This corresponds exactly to the requirements of the US long-term strategy TRADOC 525-3-1 "Win in a Complex World 2020-2040" from September 2014.

The realisation of these priorities includes

Integrated deterrence,
campaigning [propaganda, W.E.] and the
building a lasting advantage.

Furthermore, the USA explicitly rules out any renunciation of a nuclear first strike.

The bloody conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East have catapulted humanity to the brink of a global nuclear war. De-escalation and diplomacy no longer seem to exist in the minds of the warring parties.

On 15 November 2022, senators and representatives received guidance from the US Congressional Research Service quoting from the new National Security Strategy: "The United States is a global power with global interests. We are stronger in every region because we are engaged in the other regions."

The congress paper continues: "...US policymakers are pursuing the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia... US military operations in World War I and World War II, as well as numerous US military operations and day-to-day operations since World War II ... have apparently contributed in no small part to supporting this goal." (20)

For a century, it has primarily been about increasing the wealth of a group of tycoons in the City of London and on Wall Street. A look at current financial flows confirms this. The financial elites in the US and the UK appear to have little interest in resolving the Ukraine conflict.

The Senate hearing on 28 February 2023 regarding the war in Ukraine is extremely revealing in this context. Senator Rick Scott asked 3-star General Keith Kellogg: "But why hasn't Germany done its part to provide lethal aid?" "I don't think," the general said, "Germany is playing a role in Europe right now."

The general then enthuses to the senator: "If you can defeat a strategic opponent and not use US troops, you're at the height of professionalism; because if you let the Ukrainians win, a strategic opponent is off the table and we can focus on what we should be doing against our main opponent, and right now that's China.... It's China!!! if we fail, we might have to fight another European war, that would be the third time." (21) Well, the US is failing in Ukraine right now!

This hearing was broadcast by the US Senate. Here it can be felt again, America's allegedly God-ordained mission.

From the original philosophy of Manifest Destiny, the God-given mandate to conquer the land west of the former colonies, a natural right to expansion was derived. The us-American imperialism and the ascent to the The only world power seems to be an inevitable result of this ideology. (22)

Today, things are boiling in the Balkans, Ukraine, Armenia, the Middle East and Africa. These are the very fault lines that led to the catastrophe of the 20th century in 1914.

In the middle of the war, in May 1916, the governments of Great Britain and France in secret Sykes-Picot Agreement on Common colonial goals in the Middle East.

Borders were drawn without regard to ethnic and cultural structures. Great Britain was given what is now Jordan, Iraq and parts of Palestine. With a few strokes of the pen, the British and French destroyed the Ottomans' conflict defence mechanisms in the Middle East. This meant the end of peace and was a catastrophe for most Arabs. The roots of today's wars and terrorism in the Muslim-Arab tensions lie in this agreement

The prerequisite for a sustainable peace will be to come to terms with the path to the First World War and the war aims of the parties to the conflict at that time as truthfully as possible. The war in Yugoslavia also let the evil spirit of the Polish Marshal Pilsudski out of the bottle again. Pilsudski 100 years ago, the Polish-dominated area between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea to.

On 21 July 2021, the USA and Germany committed to safeguarding Ukraine's sovereignty and energy security. And also to expand the Three Seas Initiative - The Adriatic Sea has now been added here. Poland is now the geostrategic anchor of the US aircraft carrier in Europe.

In his State of the Union address at the end of October 2023, US President Biden invoked war in a way that made many people in the world shudder. "We are at a turning point in history - one of those moments when the decisions we make today will determine the future for decades to come. "History has taught us," Biden said, "that terrorists who pay no price for their terror and dictators who pay no price for their aggression cause more chaos, death and destruction."

In this context, the Canadian economist Michael Chossudovsky recalls the number of deaths caused by the uninterrupted series of wars, coups and other subversive operations of the United States from the end of the war in 1945 until today - a figure estimated at 20 to 30 million. (23)

That is about twice as many casualties as in the First World War. And the two countries that are listed as enemies today were allied with the United States in the Second World War.

They paid the highest price in human lives for the victory over the National Socialist, fascist Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis - about 27 million from the Soviet Union and 20 million from China, compared to just over 400,000 from the United States.

And at the end of his speech to the nation, Biden emphasised: "We are the United States of America - the United States of America. And there is nothing - nothing beyond our capabilities when we do it together. [...] May God bless you all. And may God protect our troops."

What kind of god is it that is supposed to protect the troops of a nation that wants to flourish on the bones of the murdered natives? Today, the same power elites as in 1914 want to turn us into a World War III lead.

And against this backdrop, [German] Defence Minister Pistorius called for a "change of mentality" among Germans in security matters on 29 October in the [TV] programme 'Berlin-direkt': "We have to get used to the idea again that the threat of war could loom in Europe". Could? War has returned to Europe since 1999! And fighting has been going on in Ukraine since May 2014! And now Pistorius is demanding: "We must become fit for war."

We are still facing the ruins and traumas of Germany's wartime prowess in the last century! Enough once and for all! "Let us be inspired by the will to serve the peace of the world", as it says in the Preamble of the Basic Law stands.

For 173 years, American hegemonic ambitions and Anglo-Saxon cohesive forces have prevented the vision of the French writer and politician Victor-Marie Hugo from materialising. He wrote in 1850: "A day will come when you France, Russia, you, Italy, England, Germany, all you nations of the continent, will unite closely into a higher community and establish the great European brotherhood. A day will come when there will be no other battlefields than the markets open to trade and the minds open to ideas." (24)

Yes, and that day will come! The Athenian strategist Thucydides has timeless advice for us: "But whoever wants to clearly recognise the past and thus also the future, which will once again, according to human nature, be the same or similar, may find it useful, and that shall be enough for me: It is written for permanent possession, not as a showpiece for one-off listening.“

Let us outlaw war, the brother of lies! Let us strive for truthfulness, the sister of peace!

____

Footnotes:

1 https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/Joint_Vision_2020

2 https://globalbridge.ch/

3 https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/russland-etat-militaer-100.html

4 Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry (The Nye Report), U.S. Congress, Senate, 74th Congress, 2nd session, February 24, 1936,3-13

5 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cid=N00009638

6 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/28/remarks-president-unitedstates-military-academy-commencement-ceremony

7 https://ia800508.us.archive.org/12/items/engdahl/engdahl-full-spectrum-dominance.pdf

8 Daniel Todman, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 (2020) p 744.

9 As early as autumn 1945, the plan called TOTALITY (JIC 329/1) envisaged a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with 20 to 30 atomic bombs. Details in Kaku/ Axelrod 1987, pp. 30-31

10 http://www.geocities.ws/films4/marshallplan.htm

11 Extension of Remarks of Hon. Hale Boggs of Louisiana in the House of Representatives Tuesday, April 27, Appendix to the Congressional Record 1948 pp A2534-5

12 https://internationalepolitik.de/de/nordatlantische-allianz

13 https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/reagan-policy-soviet-bloc-nations-1982/

14 https://globalsouth.co/2023/11/12/why-does-the-us-support-israel-a-geopolitical-analysiswith-economist-michael-hudson/

15 Mette; Norbert: "We are in the middle of a third world war" https://books.google.at/books....

16 Reprinted in Effenberger, Wolfgang/Wimmer, Willy: "Wiederkehr der Hasardeure - Schattenstrategen, Kriegstreiber, stille Profiteure 1914 und heute", Höhr-Grenzhausen 2014, p. 547

17 ARMY TRAINING AND DOCTRINE COMMAND FORT EUSTIS VA at http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA611359

18 Wolfgang Effenberger: The "Military-Industrial Complex" (MIC) or the "Merchants of Death" among http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23092

19 Biden-Harris-Administration-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf

20 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF10485.pdf

21 https://www.congress.gov/118/crec/2023/02/28/169/38/CREC-2023-02-28-dailydigest.pdf; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmmPHvlbdwI

22 Wolfgang Effenberger: "Pillars of US power. Seafaring mentality and Puritanism". Gauting 205, p. 348

23 "From 1945 to today - 20 to 30 million people killed by the USA", by Manlio Dinucci, translation K. R., Il Manifesto (Italy) , Voltaire Network, 21 November 2018, www.voltairenet.org/article204026.html

24 Douze discours, 1850

____

Here you will find a short biography and the bookswritten by Wolfgang Effenberger.

Der Beitrag „Full Spectrum Dominance“ – Herrschaftsstrategien von USA und NATO erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

to the first part

to the second part

Part 3: Arrogance or ignorance? - The behaviour of German politicians

Statements or actions by some politicians can give cause for concern. In the Federal Republic of Germany, citizens who are attentive to the separation of powers and the rule of law have had to realise with disillusionment from time to time in the past that high-ranking politicians seem to have no knowledge of this or that they exercise their office with arrogance and indifference or with contempt for the people and the state.

Minister of the Chancellery publicly criticises court decision

One example is the former Minister of the Chancellery, Helge Braun, who publicly criticised court decisions on the 'CORONA protection measures' at the time in 2020. He did so in a way that had to be understood as a member of the government disregarding judicial decisions and the independence of the judiciary, if not influencing the courts through public, media pressure.
As a result, some German media outlets even addressed the matter. The German Association of Judges issued statements, albeit not unanimously. This shows how such a statement by a member of the executive can potentially exert pressure on the administration of justice through public polarisation if members of the government lack an awareness of the rule of law.

(https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/helge-braun-in-der-kritik-verfassungsrechtliche-problematik-vollkommen-verkannt-a-b76bb61b-e2a7-4927-a01a-4f7b015f1dd1; https://de.linkedin.com/pulse/wenn-die-regierung-gerichte-kritisiert-dr-florian-toncar)

Chancellor's power and government crisis in Thuringia in 2020

An outstanding case of disregard for the horizontal and vertical separation of powers, the rule of law and anti-democratic arrogance was the case of "Merkel-Thuringian Parliament-Kemmerich", from the beginning of February 2020.
On 5 February 2020, the State parliament in Erfurt In the third round of voting, the FDP candidate Thomas Kemmerich was elected Minister President, after the Left Party candidate Bodo Ramelow had previously failed in two rounds of voting in his attempt to be re-elected. It was obvious that this result for Kemmerich's election came about with votes from the AfD parliamentary group, as they did not vote for their own candidate, but surprisingly voted unanimously in favour of Kemmerich. This is an unusual tactic, but not formally objectionable; there is no obligation to vote for a particular candidate - so far, so good.
One day later, the then Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel She spoke during a visit abroad and declared in South Africa that the election was "unforgivable" and that it was "a bad day for democracy". The election had broken with the basic conviction that applies to the CDU and to her personally, namely that "no majorities should be won with the help of the AfD". The result must be "reversed". (From: Legal Tribune Online; https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/bverfg-2bve420-angela-merkel-aeusserungen-thueringen-wahl-2020-verfassungswidrig/ , viewed on 1 August 2023)

The Chancellor, who on the one hand has to respect an election that is formally correct according to democratic conventions, explained, this election must be cancelledbecause it would contradict party-political and their own convictions.
In addition, as Federal Chancellor she must respect the principle of federalism enshrined in the Basic Law - the associated "Vertical separation of powers" - and therefore such commentary or even interference on their part in the affairs of a federal state is unacceptable. At least that is how it should be.

But that's not all: Chancellor Merkel subsequently used the opportunity to publicise her own activities on the Chancellor's website and on other government websites on the Internet. Resources of the Federal Governmentto stir up a mood of personal displeasure, party political motives and hostility towards an opposition party as well as against the election of Prime Minister Kemmerich.
As with her previous statements, she abused her office as Chancellor and the opportunities available to her to publicly fight out party issues and party strategies in a heated debate. Thus it also violated the neutrality requirement to a considerable extent.

And subsequently, various parties worked to ensure that the newly elected FDP politician Kemmerich, who had already been congratulated on his election in the state parliament, gave up his newly won office after three days, insulted and humiliated, under growing pressure from all over Germany. (As a side note, it should be remembered that a Left Party MP threw a bouquet of flowers at Kemmerich's feet, which was probably originally intended for her party colleague Ramelow. Above all, this sheds light on the understanding of democracy and the mental state in the ranks of the LINKE). Even Kemmersich's FDP party leader, Christian Lindnerrushed to Thuringia to influence him in this regard. The long arm of the head of government Merkel had a powerful effect and brought down the rule of law and many people's sense of justice.

Kemmerich was a victim of the Chancellor's arrogance, who cast aside the separation of powers, the rule of law and democracy as she saw fit. In the end, he and his family were arrested for serious Threats from the far-left camp under Police protection. The whole affair quickly attracted international attention as a result of the chancellor's intervention. It is by no means the case that Merkel was reacting to displeasure, concern or disapproval abroad because of the election process. No, the reactions abroad were a consequence of the excitement fuelled here at home. Representations in the leading German media wanted to create a different picture of cause and effect.

Chancellor Merkel thus succeeded in having an FDP politician resign as head of government in a federal state, Thuringia for a considerable period of around six weeks not in the Federal Council was represented and a Government crisis in Thuringia followed. As a result, it is less in favour of the Alternative for Germany (AfD)but also the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as well as the own party (CDU). Above all, Merkel attacked the rule of law.

Merkel declared after the election: "At the very least, the CDU is not allowed to participate in a government under the elected prime minister. It was a bad day for democracy."
The entire process was not just a bad day for the Democracy; that which Angela Merkel with this was bad for democracy and devastating for the rule of law overall. It was bad in a completely different way to what the Chancellor meant.

As a result of the resulting government crisis, a new election was almost necessary in Thuringia. Merkel called the reactions of Kramp-Karrenbauer and Söder (CSU, Bavaria) as well as the recommendation of the CDU presidium in favour of new elections in Thuringia "very important overall" for the grand coalition. (https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/das-ergebnis-muss-ruckgangig-gemacht-werden-4143196.html, viewed on 1 August 2023)

In Thuringia, however, this was made possible by numerous agreement talks held between the state parliamentary groups, among Exclusion of the AfD parliamentary groupand the agreed choice of the previous employer was LINKEN Prime Ministers Ramelow averted. All in all, these events were unworthy of a constitutional state and a functioning democracy.

Discrimination against the 'Alternative for Germany' - Organ dispute proceedings at the Federal Constitutional Court

What has not yet been mentioned is the question of Discrimination against the 'Alternative for Germany' and that the AfD was subsequently Federal Constitutional Court in one Organ dispute proceedings clarified whether a disadvantage in the Competition between the parties would be present. Merkel had therefore unilaterally influenced the competition between the political parties. "The associated interference with the right to equal opportunities of the parties under Article 21 (1) sentence 1 GG (Basic Law) was neither justified by the Federal Chancellor's mandate to safeguard the stability of the Federal Government and the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the international community, nor was it a permissible measure of the Federal Government's public relations work. It also unlawful use of state resourcesby documenting the statement on the websites of the Chancellor and the Federal Government". (German: Legal Tribune Online, Merkel's statements on the Thuringia election 2020 unconstitutional) The BVerG has confirmed the AfD's objections on both points and the Behaviour of the Chancellor as unconstitutional categorised. Merkel, who was no longer Chancellor at the time, was reprimanded, nothing more.

It should also be mentioned that this judgement by the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court was not unanimous, but was reached by five votes to three. The Constitutional judge Prof Dr Astrid Wallrabenstein cast a special vote: Wallrabenstein is of the opinion that "statements on political issues should generally not be subject to any neutrality control by the Federal Constitutional Court," and that government action should not be neutral at all, even if citizens expect it to be. In a democracy, government work is always political and in a party democracy it is characterised by party politics. "A neutral, expert government" is "not the expectation of the Basic Law, but on the contrary an expression of a crisis phenomenon." Indeed, she posits the thesis that an expectation of neutrality is even harmful, which she justifies in a very unique system of logic. However, at no point does it seem to occur to this constitutional judge that there must be a limit to what she calls the "binding of the actions of government representatives to parties".

However, this limit comes into play where there is serious interference in the competition between the parties, which constitutes an obstruction and denigration of opposition parties or where constitutional principles are affected. (This does not include efforts to cancel an election that has been properly held. This was not dealt with here by the BVerfG). The thoughts of the BVerfG judge Wallrabenstein are apparently completely free of such considerations. "In Wallrabenstein's view, the decisions of the BVerfG on bans on statements by members of the government are detrimental to democratic decision-making and its realisation in the parliamentary system of government. But: What would the Federal Constitutional Court judge Wallrabenstein say if the detested opposition in the form of the party 'Alternative for Germany' had leading government responsibility? - That would be interesting to find out - would she also see an expectation of neutrality as harmful in this case?

Apparently, Wallrabenstein was able to convince two other fellow judges to change the court's established case law. But another vote was missing: In the event of a stalemate, the AfD's applications would have been rejected." (https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/bverfg-2bve420-angela-merkel-aeusserungen-thueringen-wahl-2020-verfassungswidrig/; https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/bverfg-2bve420-2bve520-aeusserungsbefugnis-bundeskanzlerin-merkel-afd-thueringen-wahl/)

Judge Wallrabenstein's reasoning in its entirety must cause concern, and by no means only among members of the 'Alternative for Germany', but among all Germans. (In another case concerning ECB bond purchases, Wallrabenstein was declared biased in January 2021 because of an interview for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. - Federal Constitutional Court - Decisions - Successful recusal request against a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court in proceedings concerning the issuance of an enforcement order in the "PSPP proceedings"; ECB proceedings: Judge Wallrabenstein declared biased (faz.net))

Wallrabenstein was elected to the Federal Constitutional Court in May 2020 at the suggestion of the Green Party and appointed by the Federal President in June 2020. (https://taz.de/Neue-Richterin-am-Verfassungsgericht/!5682377/)

The events in Thuringia in 2020 and the fact that Angela Merkel's actions have not led to any tangible consequences, as well as the way in which the media landscape in Germany has reacted to them, paint a picture of a largely dysfunctional constitutional state. The judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court does not change this in any significant way. So far, there have been no consequences for any of the individuals or parties involved.

In April 2023 Merkel the highest Honourable mention of the FRG, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in a special version, was awarded. Only two other German citizens have received this honour before her, both former Federal Chancellor the CDU with a long previous term of office: Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Cabbage. (Deutsche Welle: Angela Merkel receives Germany's highest honour; William Glucroft, 17.04.2023; viewed on 2.8.23) The award stays in the family, so to speak...

The examples described here are only two from the Federal Republic of Germany.

Voter disillusionment and "disenchantment with politics"

And both in the media and in politics, people are ostensibly surprised that in Thuringia - and not only there - a fairly young opposition party (the Alternative for Germany, AfD) is gaining strength in polls and elections, some other parties, including the CDU, are losing support. Or people are demonstratively puzzling over why the Number of non-voters is high in many ballots. The reasons for this are not a rejection of democracy, "disenchantment with democracy" or "hostility to democracy" as such, or other misleading representations, as repeatedly put forward in poor attempts at explanation by leading politicians or the media.

Both protest and resignation certainly contribute significantly to certain voter behaviour. In a representative democracy, voters utilise the obvious (and rare) opportunities to make a statement against conditions. A political system that recognises few limits or rules and ignores the rule of law and the sense of justice is increasingly met with rejection. Under certain circumstances, this can be expressed through a protest vote.

Distrust of political parties and democracy is developing in parts of the German electorate. This should come as no surprise against the backdrop of a number of events and developments. deformed democracy and Evaporation of the rule of law although most of them are not always able to fully analyse or theoretically grasp this. Additional Voter abuse for "wrong" voting decisions or vilification of citizens who demonstrate against what are perceived as grievances completes the unfavourable picture in Germany.

The now customary, unspeakably derogatory way of dealing with the formation of opinion and the mood of Germans in the "new federal states" (former GDR), even from "Commissioner for Eastern Europe" does not in the slightest justice to an analysis of the causes, on the contrary. One should primarily think, free of ideological pretensions, about the image that the political establishment of the FRG presents to the people concerned and the impression it creates.

Over the past thirty years, the majority of former GDR citizens have become increasingly disillusioned for a variety of reasons following the GDR's annexation to the FRG, starting with the Treuhandanstalt's practice of liquidation and privatisation. If you talk to people, you quickly recognise this disillusionment and the reasons for it; many ask themselves, "What did we take to the streets for back then, demonstrating for freedom - for this...?"

And this disappointment is by no means only to do with the material consequences of job loss, low pensions, rising costs or a general feeling of being "left behind". This merely shows that those who repeatedly bring up such explanations are not prepared to analyse openly and are incapable of insight.

Parties and individuals, including journalists and academics, who instigate, fuel, justify, participate in or duck out of events such as those in Thuringia in 2020 without being aware of the consequences or even their own anti-democratic mindset and disregard for the rule of law do not generate trust among citizens; they gamble it away.
The same applies to the media, which in the "Merkel-Thuringian State Parliament-Kemmerich" case primarily referred to whether and to what extent the treatment of the AfD was appropriate or justified or whether the questionable tactical voting behaviour of the AfD parliamentary group in the Thuringian State Parliament was itself reprehensible. This can certainly be discussed in passing; however, these are not the decisive questions that need to be investigated in connection with the entire case. There were few exceptions on the part of the leading media. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) at least attempted to show in a programme that controversial views can exist on this.
(https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2020/Thueringen-Was-heisst-hier-Demokratie,thueringen168.html)

And just think: what would have been the reaction in Germany from media organisations, ministries, party headquarters or "experts" if a similar incident to the Thuringia election had been discovered in another country, perhaps in Hungary or Russia? How quickly would the outrage have spiralled in Germany? But here, in Germany, it's all right ...

These two examples of Helge Braun and the "CAUSA Thüringen" could be supplemented by numerous others. A scientific investigation into whether the Federal Constitutional Court is always neutral or in some cases more influenced by party politics or ideology could certainly bring sobering results to light.

Conclusion

A large number of citizens increasingly see democracy as an inadequate or even bad form of government that should be rejected, at least according to surveys or media reports. This is mainly due to the fact that we are dealing with a "controlled", deformed democracy with the progressive dissolution of the rule of law. Many people are aware of this without always analysing it thoroughly and understanding it theoretically, as mentioned above.

This is often followed by fundamental rejection, which is interpreted as an extremist attitude, radicalism or even rejection of the state. Such short-sighted judgements do an injustice to many citizens and undermine any possibility of investigating the causes. What many citizens actually reject here is not the Democracy as such or even the free and democratic basic orderas is rashly assumed of any kind of opposition. Citizens reject a distorted democracythat does not deliver what it promises and is not what it claims to be.

Voters are becoming extras in an entrenched system. The sovereign from the Basic Law increasingly sees itself degraded to an annoying accessory or disruptive factor. A growing number of citizens recognise this and know that many things are fundamentally wrong. Citizens in general currently have no adequate or effective means of initiating or bringing about the necessary changes.
First of all, a large number of citizens need to familiarise themselves with the issue and develop an awareness of the situation. This could potentially lead to effective initiatives. The leading media would also have a special role to play here, although it should be noted that there has been no sign in recent years that they are willing to take an in-depth and critical look at questions relating to the rule of law or other sensitive issues - on the contrary. They take on the task of obfuscating or providing false interpretations and are therefore rather an essential part of the problem.

How could improvements in the separation of powers be achieved? - Possible steps in the right direction

The question arises as to whether or to what extent measures can be devised for the state of the separation of powers and the imbalance in the rule of law that would allow the separation of powers to be transferred from the world of theory, assumptions and assertions into reality. Changes are conceivable that are not too complicated and far-reaching for the first steps.

1. Separation of parliamentary mandate and governmentIt is one of the simple measures that elected members of parliament should give up their parliamentary mandate if they are appointed to a government. A list candidate of the party can take their place. In the event that a member of parliament directly elected with the first vote is appointed to the government, the next list candidate of his party from his federal state should move up if necessary.
2. The separation of party function and government: One could consider calling for the legal separation of party office and parliamentary or state parliamentary office. Also as a lesson from CAUSA Thuringia, 2020, this would be an important measure to formally separate party politics and government office to a large extent. Statements and actions as a party member and party-strategic statements must be prohibited for members of the government, in clear contrast to the questionable statement by constitutional judge Wallrabenstein. Such a dividing line between "office and cabinet" is to be regarded as more important than separating party office and parliamentary mandate.
3. If the FRG is to maintain constitutional structures, it is imperative that steps be taken to Independence of the judiciary to be brought about. The Council of Europe's 'Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights', as mentioned above, has made proposals in this regard. For example, the Creation of a separate judicial council as a self-governing body and a supreme supervisor of the judiciary that is independent of the government Justiceprimarily the case law, from the Ministry of Justice and government access. (Allegations of politically motivated abuses of the criminal justice system in the member states of the Council of Europe: https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/xref/xref-xml2html-en.asp?fileid=12276&lang=en) A necessary amendment to the Basic Law for this should not be too high a hurdle, after numerous and often far-reaching amendments to the Basic Law have been made in recent years.
4. The Election procedure and the selection of candidates for federal constitutional judges should be radically reformed. For example, applications for candidacies for the Federal Constitutional Court or proposals from groups outside of parliament should be made possible, and the right of parties or parliamentary groups to make proposals must either be severely limited or, if possible, cancelled altogether. The election of new constitutional judges, if at all, should continue to be carried out by the Bundestag and Bundesrat, at most in part and for the time being. Judges in general must be appointed by the aforementioned Judicial Council to be created or by a separate body, independent of parliament and party influence; this can also apply to constitutional judges.
5. The Abolition of parliamentary state secretaries should be one of the first measures with which a separation between the powers of the state can be effectively promoted. If ministers require personal state secretaries as direct employees and confidants, a parliamentary decision can be made as to whether they can employ external and parliament-neutral (preferably even non-party-affiliated) personal trusted experts in the ministry for the duration of their term of office.
6. The Party financing through state funding and large donations is another issue. The financial self-service that influential parties find in the current system is an unacceptable situation. Funding should be limited to a minimum by law or stopped altogether. Transparency regarding party capital and donations must be increased. Above all, party shareholdings and entrepreneurial income must be publicly disclosed in annual reports. Newspaper publishers in which political parties are involved as owners or which are fully owned by a party must be clearly labelled on the title that they are under the influence of a party and that there is a shareholding.
7. A serious case and possibly insufficiently reformable as a whole is the Defence of the constitution (BfV and LfV) and the network of federal and state offices for the protection of the constitution. For the time being, at least the Election procedure for the Presidents of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution be changed. In the medium term, the VS as a whole must be put to the test.

Many of those affected or responsible obviously do not notice the blatant imbalance with regard to the principles of the rule of law in Germany and some other Western countries - or they do not want to see it. Journalists also seem to have lost an awareness of the principles of the rule of law, whereby a lack of general education, a lack of training or journalism studies, inadequate political education and ideological blindness can play a role.

The political will alone must exist for such initial and decisive steps towards change. This is probably the biggest problem, because a large number of people with influence and often highly remunerated positions have settled into a system and will not willingly change a system in which they have been successful.
As far as the difficulties and shortcomings of the state structure and everyday political practice in the FRG (but also in other Western states) are concerned, some essential points are only touched on here and are not sufficiently detailed. The purpose of this discussion is first and foremost to raise awareness of the principles of the rule of law. Of course, some of the aspects mentioned require more in-depth analysis in order to work out the connections and effects. A blog post cannot fulfil this task.
The focus must always be on the rule of law and the division of the three traditional state powers.

Montesquieu is disregarded - long live Montesquieu!

to the first part

to the second part

___

Further sources:

The new small opposition party Die BASIS ("Basisdemokratische Partei Deutschland") has published an article on the separation of powers in Germany: The separation of powers - a protective shield for democracy and the rule of law? - dieBasis | Grassroots Democratic Party Germany (diebasis-partei.de)

https://www.gewaltenteilung.de/gewaltenteilung-in-deutschland-die-steckengebliebene-reform/
https://www.wissen.de/bildwb/charles-de-montesquieu-vater-der-modernen-verfassung
https://www.lernhelfer.de/schuelerlexikon/politikwirtschaft/artikel/charles-louis-de-secondat-baron-de-la-brede-et-de
https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/planet-wissen-wdr/video-friedrich-der-grosse-und-voltaire-100.amp
https://www.gewaltenteilung.de/staatsanwaltschaft-und-gewaltenteilung/
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bundesverfassungsgericht-195.html

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/DE/Das-Gericht/Organisation/organisation_node.html
https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-890468 (State Secretaries)
https://www.juraforum.de/lexikon/gewaltenteilung-horizontal-vertikal
https://www.dadalos.org/deutsch/Demokratie/Demokratie/Grundkurs3/Gewaltenteilung/gewaltenteilung.htm
https://www.bpb.de/themen/politisches-system/24-deutschland/40460/gewaltenverschraenkung/
https://www.morgenpost.de/politik/article237745281/justiz-unabhaengigkeit-richter-deutschland.html
https://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/richterbund-weist-kritik-des-kanzleramtsministers-an-urteilen-zu-corona-massnahmen-zurueck-a3230384.html
http://www.cleanstate.de/Behaupteter%20politisch%20motivierter%20Missbrauch%20des%20Strafrechtssystems%20in%20Mitgliedstaaten%20des%20Europarats.html
https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb5/prof/OEF004/Aktuelles_Semester_-_Guenzel/Erasmus.Staatsorga/StOrg_Rechtsstaatsprinzip.WS.12.13.Internet.pdf
(Johanna Eidenberger: Montesquieu and the separation of powers; seminar paper, Johannes Kepler University Linz, May 2002 https://www.ph-online.ac.at/ph-ooe/voe_main2.getVollText?pDocumentNr=45850&pCurrPk=4207)
"Appointment, term of office and promotion of judges and public prosecutors". The legal situation in Germany with regard to ordinary jurisdictionFile number: WD 7 - 3000 - 043/22; Completion of work: 31 May 2022, Department: WD 7: Civil, Criminal and Procedural Law, Building and Urban Development https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/902980/fa44b4a2bd35820f5a087513c2bc7207/WD-7-043-22-pdf-data.pdf
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regierungskrise_in_Th%C3%BCringen_2020
https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/politik/urteil-afd-klage-merkel-bundesverfassungsgericht-100.html
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/verfassungsschutz-merkel-soll-kritiker-als-maassen-nachfolger-verhindert-haben-15917477.html
https://www.rnd.de/politik/haldenwang-haette-nicht-praesident-werden-sollen-2Z5CB5IRGDPNE7OWO2HCADCJ5M.html

*

Der Beitrag Bundesrepublik Deutschland am Scheideweg – Ohne Gewaltenteilung kein Rechtsstaat – Teil 3 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

On 24 December 2023, Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof wrote an urgent message to the party chairmen, general secretaries of the parties, parliamentary group chairmen in the German Bundestag and prime ministers of the federal states.

A letter to the public followed on 2 February 2024 after it became apparent that the politicians contacted, with two exceptions, did not bother to reply and certainly did not respond to the peace initiative.

Major General (ret.) Schultze-Rhonhof has sent detailed, explanatory annexes to both letters. The two letters and the annexes are published here in order to present the underlying thoughts, motives and, above all, the background information set out in this way to a broad public.

The following therefore represents the knowledge and views of Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof. At the end you will find a reference to a description of his person. Publication here is by agreement with the author.

1. Letter to the public, February 2024
2. Letter to the politicians mentioned, Christmas 2023
3. Appendix with detailed explanations and background information
4. Enclosure: Draft peace treaty

___________________________________________________________________________

1st letter to the public

Letter to the public, from February 2024

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof 39340 Haldensleben, 2 February 2024
Major General (ret.)

Ladies and gentlemen

I did not serve 37 years as a soldier to keep the peace in Germany and now watch without comment or action as Germany is slowly but probably heading towards active participation in a foreign and senseless war. Our "Three Wise Men", Chancellor Scholz, Minister Lindner and Minister Dr Habeck, all initially refused to do military service in their younger years in defence of Germany's rights and freedom and the preservation of our democracy. They are now spending far more than 10 billion euros of taxpayers' money per year on "justice", "freedom", "democracy" and Western values in a foreign state that is neither a democracy nor represents Western values. They are using our tax money and the blood of foreign conscripts to prolong a war that has now become pointless.
Ukraine is by no means a democracy and its values are not ours. 11 opposition parties are banned in Ukraine. Zelensky has banned the presidential elections scheduled for March 2024. All media in Ukraine are synchronised. No reports by German journalists critical of Ukraine are permitted from within Ukraine (comments by German journalists critical of Russia are quite common from Moscow). Political murders are the order of the day in Ukraine (according to the 3-week protocols of the Federal Agency for Civic Education until the beginning of the war). Ukraine and Russia are together the two most corrupt states in Europe (according to Transparency International). Buying exemption from military service is just as common in Ukraine as it is in Russia. With its register of offences involving breaches of state treaties and violations of UN conventions and international charters, Ukraine is in no way inferior to the Russian register in terms of frequency and severity. The type and frequency of Ukrainian war crimes are the same as those committed by Russia, with the exception of the misuse of humanitarian facilities protected under international law of war as shields for fighting troops, which only occurs on the Ukrainian side (according to the OSCE report of 29 June 2022).
This Ukraine is neither a democracy nor does it stand for our values, as the German media and the majority of our parties would have us believe. The interpretation presented to us by the official side, that Ukraine would co-defend our values, is as foolish as Struck's "Germany's defence in the Hindu Kush" was. I expect the former conscientious objectors in the Bundestag and in the German government to actively campaign for an end to the war in Ukraine as soon as possible - true to their former peace-mindedness - and to abandon their unrealistic phantom ideas of a victory in Ukraine. I expect the same from all other governments and members of parliament. The idea of a possible reunification of two quarrelling and now hating parts of a nation that had been at war with each other for eight years before the Russian invasion into a future Ukraine of old is the dream dance of fools. Regarding the eagerness of the majority of German parties to help the Ukrainians to victory with money and arms supplies after all, I am reminded of a saying by Russian Lieutenant General Alexander Lebed, who said during the first Chechen war: "Let me recruit a company from the sons of the elite and the war will be over the next day". (Lebed was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in Russia in 1996).
The second question at issue here is whether the Russian Federation has actually threatened the West or even just one NATO country or another neighbouring country since its withdrawal from Central Europe following the end of the Soviet disintegration process. I will answer this question in detail in the explanatory memorandum to the following letter to politicians. This justification follows as Annex 1 to this e-mail.
Since 15 August 2022, I have tried to educate hundreds of MPs about the history of the Russian invasion and the events inside Ukraine. I then proposed a German initiative for a rapid end to the war to the Federal Chancellor and former chancellors and top politicians with channels of communication with Moscow that were still open. I sent my last attempt at Christmas 2023 with the following letter to members of the Federal Government, the parliamentary group leaders of all parties in the Bundestag, all party leaders and general secretaries and all state prime ministers. Only two party leaders in the side rows of the plenary chamber responded in favour and with the message that they could do nothing. I have just received a polite but negative reply from the leader of the largest opposition party [note: Christian Democratic Union, CDU], whose concealment and ignoring of the long history of the war I cannot accept and whose insinuations against Putin I largely cannot confirm. Incidentally, allegedly proven but unjustified insinuations were also part and parcel of the fuel for the two world wars. Despite all politeness, the reply gives the impression that its author has not read the reasoning behind my proposal (Annex 1) at all.
Some of the German people are now fed up with not being informed about the background to the war in Ukraine and investing 10 to 15 billion euros a year in a pointless foreign war and the further deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians when their own budgets are tight. If the German government, disregarding German interests, risks the Ukraine war - as originally feared by Chancellor Scholz - escalating into a conflagration and also involving Germany, the people themselves must remind the government of its first duty. So far, the overwhelming majority of German politicians are primarily interested in a victory for the Ukrainians and a defeat for the Russians and only secondarily in peace. Please read my Christmas letter to the "politicians" and pass on my thoughts to other interested parties. And try to convince your MPs of the possibility of an early end to the war.

Yours, Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof

_________________________________________________________________________

2nd letter to the politicians, 24 Dec. 2023

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof [address]

Major General (ret.)                                                            

This letter was sent

to all party chairmen and chairwomen, party secretaries-general, parliamentary group chairmen in the German Bundestag and the prime ministers of the federal states.

Salutation!

The war in Ukraine has been raging for almost two years and there is no end in sight, not even a practicable impetus from Germany that could bring about an early end to the war.

After having unsuccessfully approached Chancellor Scholz and the leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag with a proposal on this issue, I am now writing this letter to all German party leaders, the leaders of the parliamentary groups in the German Bundestag, the Secretaries General of the parties and the Prime Ministers of the federal states with the request to urge the Federal Government to mediate a rapid peace solution in line with the following proposal (Annex 2).

When soberly calculated and analysed, the war in Ukraine cannot be won by either of the warring parties, unless it escalates into a "Third World War". Nevertheless, the USA, NATO, the EU and, within the aforementioned communities of states, first and foremost the Federal Republic of Germany are subsidising the war as if it could be won through Ukraine. This is aiding and abetting Ukraine's military bankruptcy and deliberately accepting the continuation of mass killings and destruction in the war zone. It seems as if the leading political forces in Germany still believe they are faced with the military choice of "Russia or Ukraine". But we should be consciously facing the political choice of "war or peace". Both together, a military victory of only one warring party and a lasting and reconciliatory peace is not possible.

On sober and objective reflection, Germany and our European allies have so far been faced with eight (recently nine) theoretically possible developments. All the options open so far promise a bad outcome. None of them will end in anything better than a frozen ceasefire. None of the options lead to real peace. NATO, the EU and Germany are at a dead end with their Ukraine policy to date.

The 8 (now 9) theoretical possibilities mentioned are:

1. Russia wins in the sense that it takes control of Ukraine. Then Germany and the West, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, will once again find themselves in a Cold War against each other for a very long time to their mutual detriment.
2. Ukraine wins in the sense that it recaptures all the territories previously occupied by Russia. The approximately 8 million Russian citizens of Ukraine will then face terrible persecution and punishment. President Zelensky has announced this several times. And Germany is threatened by the next wave of refugees.
3. There is a military stalemate on the battlefield without a subsequent mutually agreed peace solution. Then we are faced with a European "Korea solution" with a Cold War and a permanent centre of danger in Europe.
4. The war will continue endlessly without stalemate or victory. Then hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians will die and be maimed senselessly. Ukraine will continue to be destroyed and Germany will continue to pay and supply weapons to Ukraine without end.
5. Negotiations are underway. Then, given the mutual preconditions put forward by both warring parties so far and the hardening of positions and hatred that has occurred in the meantime and the interference that is certainly to be expected from NATO, the EU and the USA, there will be months, if not years, of wrangling. Accordingly, the destruction and human sacrifices will continue. With the current Ukrainian and Russian preconditions for negotiations, it is foreseeable that negotiations will not even take place.
6. There is a ceasefire. Ceasefires are not a solution to the war problem, but merely a procedural step. This must be followed by a reconciliation of interests between the hostile neighbouring states of Ukraine and the Russian Federation. There are currently no signs of willingness or signs of a reconciliation of interests among the warring parties, in NATO, in the EU, in the USA or in the "political world" of Germany.
7. Ukraine is clearly approaching defeat. There is then a risk that NATO, and therefore also the USA and Germany, will intervene in the war. Despite claims to the contrary, all previous promises of support from NATO and EU states point to this.
8. NATO intervenes in the Ukraine war with its own troops. There is then a danger that Russia will reach the limits of its defence capabilities and deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe at the risk of its own defeat. Russia will not dare to use strategic nuclear weapons against the USA, and the war will be fought in our Europe. Obvious targets for Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe would be the US command centres from which American support for Ukraine is already being supplied and controlled, Ramstein and Wiesbaden. (Addition from 6 February 2024 from the Tucker Carlson-Putin interview, 69th min u 40th sec: Carlson quotes US senator from 5 February 2024 from US debate on US aid to Ukraine: "Either we support Ukraine now or US soldiers will deploy and fight in Ukraine.")

9. after the next presidential election, the USA will completely withdraw its financial and material support for Ukraine. The EU, and with it its main financier Germany, will then continue to support Ukraine as unsuccessfully as before with greatly increased contributions and keep the war "on the boil". All promises of loyalty and support from Brussels and Berlin suggest this. This would drag Germany further and deeper into Ukraine's debt quagmire than before.

As all the solutions attempted so far have led to nothing but further prolongation of the war, a way out must be found through a different approach. The approach to an early end to the war can be an arbitration award in the form of a fully and comprehensively formulated peace treaty that is negotiable for both warring parties. The proposal must satisfy the vital interests (not demands) of the two belligerent peoples - Ukrainians and Russians - and accordingly require both sides to make reasonable sacrifices, fulfil the right to self-determination of the affected populations and present a result that can be expected anyway after the further course of the war. The arbitration procedure prevented the outbreak of wars "in the air" twice in the last century. By proposing such a treaty text, both warring parties could assess whether they could come closer together on its basis and negotiate and reach an agreement without "non-negotiable" preconditions or whether they would prefer to continue the bloodshed and sacrifice of war. The arbitration award was to be submitted to the two belligerents by Germany, France and Italy - and for good reason only by them.

All previous calls for negotiations from NATO and EU circles were linked to unilateral waiver conditions exclusively for Russia and were therefore unsuitable. Almost all previous requests lacked a concrete offer to Russia.

I have spent 20 years researching the causes of war, peace efforts and peace treaties and have written books on the subject. With this prior knowledge, I take the liberty of presenting you with a proposal for such a fully formulated treaty text in my Annex 2 to this letter. The guiding principle of this proposal is a reconciliation of interests and the goal of long-term reconciliation.

As this approach is incomprehensible at first reading in view of the two years of pro-Ukrainian reporting and commentary in the German media and in view of the one-sided accusations against Russia that are widespread here in Germany, I would like to take the liberty of presenting you with a detailed explanation of my proposal in Annex 1 to this letter.

In view of the Federal Foreign Office's hardened, one-sided self-determination in this matter, I refrain from submitting this proposal via the Federal Foreign Office, which is actually responsible.

I ask you to advocate such a German peace initiative within the Federal Government.

If you wish, I am available to talk to you about the background to my proposal. (Offer from December 2023 to politicians and MPs)

With the sign of my esteem

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Enclosure 3: Explanation of the proposal for peace negotiations, war background, research

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof

3.2.2024

Explanatory memorandum to the draft
Ukrainian-Russian peace treaty

Structure

The urgency of the end of the war
Danger of war for Germany
The Ukrainian prehistory
Ukraine and the EU
The language dispute
Eight years of the Donbass war
The status today
The Russian prehistory
Russia and the USA
Georgia, America's pretext
Russia and NATO
The Crimea
The significance of war crimes
The psychological and political impact
The Butscha massacre
The Retroville department stores' bombardment
War crimes on both sides
The validity of the international law of war
Weighing up the legal bases and legal opinions
Negotiations and contractual partners
Participation recommendations
Warning against investments
Places of negotiations
The initiation of negotiations
Essential contents of the contract text
Impact on the German public

The urgency of the end of the war

The suffering and misery of the Ukrainian people and the destruction of their country as well as German co-financing of the war there must be ended as quickly as possible, even if EU and NATO policy currently stand in the way. It is time to dispel the illusion that the warring parties can significantly improve their positions in the event of a peace agreement if the fighting continues. The Ukrainian leadership in particular must realise that Ukraine is closer to complete self-destruction than the reconquest of territories whose majority population does not want to remain Ukrainian. To this end, it is necessary for the German government to reduce its support and promises of assistance to Ukraine and not constantly renew them. The promises from Berlin and other capitals have a psychological effect on the Kiev government like a "blank cheque to carry on". The time is ripe for a rapid end to the war and a corresponding immediate German initiative.

Developments in Germany, the USA and the EU also speak in favour of an early end to the war. In the USA, the mood and willingness of politicians and the population to continue financing the war in Ukraine with grants and loans is clearly waning. This is because there is no end in sight and the previous US arms deliveries in the form of loans will obviously have to be written off later. In the EU, the gap between Ukraine supporters and Ukraine critics is slowly widening. An end to the war would relieve the EU financially and from internal strife. In Germany, the willingness to provide billions for the Ukraine war and the Ukraine refugees from the already tight federal, state and local budgets is decreasing. Diverting money from the 100 billion special fund of the Bundeswehr for Ukraine, repeatedly transferring weapons from the already shaken Bundeswehr to Ukraine and the transfer of eight billion euros to Ukraine in 2024 plus Germany's three billion share of EU support for Ukraine in 2024 can hardly be explained to German voters in view of the budget woes at home.

In the interests of an early end to the war on the basis of a hasty peace agreement, the number of negotiating and signatory states involved should be kept to a minimum and, above all, all states pursuing their own interests in Ukraine should be excluded from the negotiations.

In the interests of an early end to the war on the basis of an urgent peace treaty, both warring parties should be offered a fully formulated treaty text that shortens the necessary negotiations and largely avoids the usual months or years of haggling, playing poker and arguing. This is the purpose of the draft peace treaty already sent to the Federal Chancellor in Annex 2, which contains all the usual political, territorial, economic, legal, military and other provisions of peace treaties.

Danger of war for Germany

Following the initially successful mediation of the Minsk II agreement, the reactions of the German governments to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict have increased in intensity since the start of the war. Despite Chancellor Scholz's repeated hesitation and reluctance, this led first to the delivery of protective waistcoats and steel helmets, then to the delivery of wheeled vehicles, then artillery guns and ammunition, then anti-aircraft tanks and anti-aircraft missiles, and finally battle tanks. After careful consideration and hesitation, the German government ultimately always gave in to Ukraine's increasing demands, pressure from allies and many German media and parliamentarians, and delivered. Now German-Ukrainian armaments cooperation is on the agenda, and the delivery of combat aircraft and cruise missiles is on the Ukrainian list of demands. Due to Ukraine's military ineffectiveness and exhaustion, and due to the unrelenting pressure on the German government, it is unlikely that it will resist this increasing involvement in indirect war participation. Germany and the Federal Government can only escape this if the war comes to a swift end.
Even the direct involvement of parts of the Bundeswehr can no longer be ruled out if the war continues and the Ukrainian armed forces are further worn down. The more often the German government accepts the EU's and NATO's declarations of solidarity and promises to Ukraine, the more difficult it will be for Germany to find a way out of this impasse of indirect war involvement and towards a solution to the conflict.

One of the very few strategically-minded German commentators, the former chairman of the NATO Military Committee and former chairman of the NATO-Russia Council, General Kujat, described the situation in an interview on 31 August and repeatedly thereafter not just as a risk, but as a "real danger" that the still local Russian-Ukrainian war could escalate into a third world war. In this context, the word "strategic" means thinking a development through to its end.

Fatally, the German government has de facto ceded to Ukraine its political and moral freedom to decide on Germany's future involvement in a possible escalating war in Ukraine. Through its repeated promises of support, combined with the expressions of solidarity within NATO and the EU, it has issued the Ukrainian government with a blank cheque for the endless continuation of the war. These days, on 16 February in Berlin, Germany's next eternal promise to support the war in Ukraine is planned in the form of a written, bilateral "security agreement". According to a radio commentary, it will apply until Ukraine is admitted to NATO. It is high time that the German government stopped its "encouragement" towards Kiev and its reassurances towards NATO. With every new promise of this kind, the door to peace negotiations is slammed shut once again.

The Ukrainian-Russian conflict has been described asymmetrically in the German media and "political establishment" for years. Both the Ukrainian prehistory and the Russian prehistory are ignored and the Ukrainian breaches of law and treaties and the massive Ukrainian war crimes are suppressed. I will describe these areas in turn before going into the necessary modalities of the proposed Ukrainian-Russian peace treaty.

The Ukrainian prehistory

Ukraine and the EU
Ukraine concluded a free trade agreement with Russia in November 2011 and negotiated an association agreement with the EU in 2012 and 2013. It tried to open up one market without losing the other. The Ukrainian government under Prime Minister Azarov intended to combine EU rapprochement with membership of Russia's free trade zone, which the Russians were prepared to negotiate after initial resistance, but which the EU Commission under Commission President Barroso rejected outright. The EU de facto attempted to assert a "claim to sole representation" for Ukraine's future foreign trade. This meant that President Yanukovych's original intention of establishing Ukraine economically and politically as a bridge between East and West had failed.
When the negotiations with the EU entered their "hot phase", the President of Ukraine, Mr Yanukovych, realistically feared that Ukraine's economy would not be able to cope economically and technically with the competitive pressure of adapting to the EU, as the GDR had previously done to the FRG. He demanded 160 billion euros in adjustment aid from the EU, and the EU refused, which was understandable.

A second obstacle was the association agreement offered by the EU. According to the treaty, Ukraine was to open up to Western imports, but was only granted minimal export quotas. With the loss of the Russian market, Ukraine was only granted a 200,000 tonne export quota to the EU for its 30 million tonnes of wheat exports per year. That was 0.7 1TP3 tonnes of the wheat on whose export and revenue Ukraine was dependent. The figure for meat products was 21TP3 tonnes and for steel exports similarly low. As a result, Yanukovych put the association agreement on hold for a year to allow time for renegotiations. EU Commission President Barroso then blatantly threatened Yanukovych "If you don't sign, the next president will".
(as if he knew that a change of power was already in the pipeline.) Barroso's presumption was the second seed that later sprouted into the Ukraine war, alongside the unfortunate allocation of Crimea as a state. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt strongly condemned the EU Commission's attempt to "give Ukraine the choice between West and East" at the time and described it as "megalomania on the part of the EU". He had already warned in 2014 that such behaviour could lead to war.
President Yanukovych has therefore not "burst" Ukraine's association with the EU out of an affinity for Russia, as reported by an ARD newsreader (22 November 2023), but has postponed it by a year out of responsibility for the Ukrainian economy.

However, the pressure of opinion in Ukraine in favour of an economic connection to the West and subsequent EU membership was now so strong among the Ukrainian population that Yanukovych was unable to survive this decision. He was overthrown and the so-called Maidan uprising broke out.

The language dispute
The overthrow of Yanukovych triggered the internal Ukrainian language dispute and, as a direct consequence, the internal Ukrainian war of separation. On 22 February 2014, Ukrainian President Yanukovych failed to achieve the planned EU association and was overthrown. The following day, on 23 February, interim President Turchynov issued a language law that declared Ukrainian to be the sole national language and thus banned Russian - previously the second national language - as the official, school and court language in the Russian-speaking cities and oblasts. However, the mother tongue is - even more than formal citizenship - an essential part of personal identity. Immediately after the law was passed, there were riots in the majority Russian-speaking cities from Odessa to Mariupol, in Crimea and in the two eastern oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk.
With the Turchynov language law, the Ukrainian central government had also violated the "European Charter for Regional Languages". By ratifying this charter in 2003, Ukraine committed itself to protecting the regional languages in its own country.

Eight years of the Donbass war
At the same time as the secession of Crimea, the eastern Ukrainian cities and oblasts were also seething. In cities such as Odessa with 65 % Russian speakers and Mariupol with 90 % Russian speakers and in the hotly contested Krematorsk with 68 % such inhabitants and in the Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts, Russian was the predominant native language. (Figures from the 2001 census) This meant that the unrest in 2014 was pre-programmed as a result of the anti-Russian language law.

On 7 and 28 April 2014 - two to five weeks after Turchinov's language law - first the Donetsk oblast with a Russian-speaking population of 75 % and then the Lugansk oblast with a Russian-speaking population of 69 % declare themselves independent people's republics. In a referendum in May 2014, over 90 % of respondents in both oblasts voted in favour of their independence from Kiev. The Ukrainian central government then deployed the military against them and suppressed similar endeavours there and elsewhere in weeks of street fighting. From 12 April to 5 July, the "putschists" were defeated and driven out in an "anti-terrorist operation" in Odessa, Mariupol and the western Donbass, for example in Krematorst, Sloviansk and other cities. Since then, the local war of secession has been raging in Donbass.

What is missing for an assessment of the acts of war in the "anti-terrorist operation" is reporting in the Western media. According to unverifiable reports, the operation began with the deployment of around 100,000 soldiers from the regular Ukrainian armed forces against around 30,000 separatists. 80 % of those killed are said to have been separatist fighters at the beginning. Reports that are nevertheless available generally come from Switzerland. This is how it became known that in 2014 Ukrainian companies and entire battalions of Russian-speaking soldiers defected with their weapons to the separatist side, and that hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking Ukrainians fled from the contested areas to refugee camps in neighbouring Russia. Instead, our media only reported on "Ukrainians abducted to Russia".

Although Russia supported the Russian separatists in the breakaway oblasts, it did not attack the territorial integrity of Ukraine itself until 2022. Nevertheless, the then NATO Secretary General Rasmussen claimed as early as September 2014 that "Russia was attacking Ukraine", which the OSCE observers in the country were unable to confirm. Instead, at the beginning of May 2014, Putin called on the leaders of the two breakaway oblasts to postpone their planned referendums so as not to block possible negotiations. After the referendums, he did not recognise the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk for eight years. Instead, at the two Minsk conferences in September 2014 and February 2015, together with France and Germany, he attempted to arrange a favourable settlement for Lugansk and Donetsk as semi-autonomous oblasts within Ukraine.

What is striking about the German reporting of that time is that from 2014 to 2022, nothing was reported about the suffering of the affected populations, about the destruction in Donbass, about the plight of refugees and about Ukrainian war crimes. After all, the OSCE reported around 14,000 deaths in the two embattled eastern oblasts during this period. This meant that there was no general outrage in the German Bundestag and among the population, as there was eight years later when Russia attacked Ukraine.
The annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the intra-Ukrainian war of separation were the result of a disastrous chain, starting with the EU's unfortunate offer of association to Ukraine, the postponement of the treaty for a year by Yanukovych, the overthrow of Yanukovych and the disastrous alienation of the Russian-speaking majority of the Ukrainian population by Turchynov with his language law. My advice is not to disregard this unfortunate chain of events when attempting to reconcile Ukrainian and Russian interests and not to blame Russia in particular for the development towards war.

With regard to the legal assessment of the secession of parts of a state from the former Ukraine, a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the case of Kosovo independence on 22 July 2010 should be considered. The ruling states that "general international law does not recognise any kind of fixed prohibition of a declaration of independence" if the overwhelming majority of the population of a contiguous territory decides, through democratic decision-making, to secede from the territory that previously belonged to it. The question must also arise for the legally untrained observer as to why the secession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, each with 2 million inhabitants plus/minus the Soviet Union, was welcomed and recognised by all NATO and EU states and the secession of the Crimean population with its 2.3 million inhabitants should have been a violation of international law.

The language dispute since 2014 and the eight-year civil war with its harshness and war crimes against part of the eastern Ukrainian population preclude a prosperous coexistence of Ukrainians and the strong Russian minority in one state in the future. The Ukrainian government squandered its chance to preserve the two-nation state when it failed to respect and implement the Minsk Agreement with its autonomy solution for eastern Ukraine. This must be taken into account in a Russian-Ukrainian peace agreement if peace is to last in the long term.
Status today
Ukraine has been "bled dry" of human strength through war losses, emigration and secession (from a former population of 42 million to 23 million now), largely depleted of weapons and ammunition and heavily indebted in terms of financial strength for decades to come. It was also not in a position to lead its last attempted major offensives to success. The Ukraine war has thus de facto become an ongoing trench war a la the First World War. Without further extensive rearmament by the NATO states and other support from third countries, Ukraine will not be able to achieve any of its self-imposed territorial war aims in the future either.
Ukraine's support for the war against Russia also remains highly questionable in other respects. Firstly, Ukraine itself provided the first reason for the war with the language dispute and the use of the army against its own population in the Donbass. And secondly, Ukraine and the Russian Federation are in no way inferior to each other in terms of their authoritarian leaderships, the frequency of political murders and cases of corruption and the number of international treaties, resolutions and charters violated since 1995. The same obviously applies to the frequency of war crimes committed. (More details on this two chapters later) In summary, this means that Ukraine is neither defending "Western values" nor Europe's freedom, as some of the Western political elites suggest to their populations.

President Zelensky apparently fears for his office after General Salushnyi, the respected army chief in the country, expressed his own interest in the presidency and the mayor of Kiev, Klitschko, harshly criticised Zelenskyi's performance in office. In December 2023, Salushnyi is well ahead of Zelenskyi on the popularity scale with 88 % and 62 %. It is quite possible that, despite his frequently repeated rejection of negotiations, Zelensky would be prepared to agree to a quick end to the war on reasonable terms if it meant that he himself could end up as a bringer of peace and successfully run for president again.

The Russian prehistory

Russia and the USA
The Russian-Ukrainian rift began, among other difficulties, with the breakdown of mutual trust and increasing conflicts of interest between the USA and Russia. The US-Russian rapprochement from1997 with the NATO-Russia Founding Act and the NATO-Russia Council gave way to renewed estrangement from 2002. The USA cancelled the ABM Treaty in 2002 without renegotiating it with Russia, as requested by Russia and as provided for in the NATO-Russia Founding Act. Furthermore, 30 states negotiated a CFE successor treaty in 1999, which the NATO states, unlike Russia, subsequently failed to ratify. Last but not least, in 2008 the USA demanded the admission of Ukraine to NATO under the pretext of a crisis in Georgia, thereby jeopardising the mainstay of Russian security policy. This pillar was the reaction and security distance to the NATO area with the resulting mutual nuclear vulnerability. However, the Georgian affair has gone down in the memory of the German "political world" in a twisted way.

Georgia, America's pretext

The facts of the prehistory of the Georgian conflict were as follows:
South Ossetia, until then a northern province of Georgia, had already separated from Georgia in 1989, even before Georgia itself broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991. Afterwards, the now independent Georgia attempted to rejoin the breakaway South Ossetia in two "Georgian Wars". During mediation attempts by the EU and Russia, Russia acted as a protecting power for the Ossetians and deployed a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia. In November 2006, the regional South Ossetian government held a referendum, which resulted in a 90 per cent vote in favour of independence from Georgia. Despite this, Russia did not recognise South Ossetia's independence from Georgia, citing the question of Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which was still unresolved at the time. (Russia was on Serbia's side and opposed the secession of Kosovo).

Kosovo declared its independence on 17 February 2008. The very next day, on 18 February, the USA recognised Kosovo's independence. (This was followed by recognition by Germany on 20 February.) One month later, on 21 March, Russia recognised South Ossetian independence with reference to the previous Kosovo case. Another two weeks later, on 3 April, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, the USA applied for Georgia and, without further ado, Ukraine to join NATO. Three months later, from mid-July 2008, Russian forces held the "Caucasus Frontier" manoeuvre in the North Caucasus on Russian territory and US forces, together with Georgian forces, held the "Immediate Response" manoeuvre in Georgia.

Putin reacted to the US proposal to admit Georgia to NATO,
and now strengthened Russia's efforts to achieve independence for the South Ossetians. On 16 April, he ordered closer cooperation between the Russian and South Ossetian authorities and had the Russian peacekeeping forces there reinforced by 500 soldiers in May. The Georgians saw this as Russian interference in their internal affairs and a Russian threat. Georgian President Shaakashvili then had South Ossetia attacked and its capital bombed on 8 August 2008 in the hope of receiving support from American manoeuvre troops in his country. When Russia intervened and drove the Georgians out of South Ossetia in five days, the American-Georgian threat narrative for NATO became manifest. Since then, the sword of Damocles of NATO enlargement has hung over Russia's security architecture, not only around Georgia but also around Ukraine. This was an early milestone on the road to today's war in Ukraine.
It seems strange how almost comparable events are assessed and labelled differently depending on the point of view. NATO's intervention in Serbia to protect the threatened Kosovars was an act of "humanitarian duty to protect". And the Russian intervention in South Ossetia to protect the threatened Ossetians was a criminal attack. The intervention of NATO troops in Serbia without a UN mandate was "self-mandated", and the intervention of the Russians in South Ossetia without a UN mandate was contrary to international law. This asymmetry of judgement was repeated in 2022 when Russia intervened in the intra-Ukrainian separatist war that had been going on for eight years.

Russia and NATO
Russia's endeavours to prevent the estrangement between East and West from coming to an extreme can be seen in its efforts to maintain the risk and security distance between NATO's military area and that of the Russian Federation. It is NATO, with the nuclear power USA, that is moving towards Russia with its zone of interest, influence and military power, and not Russia, which is expanding westwards. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, Putin clearly stated that "a further eastward expansion of NATO on the former territories of the Soviet Union would mean crossing a red line". After that, the USA's Bucharest proposal in 2008 to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO was an obvious challenge to Moscow. From 2021, Ukraine's wishes for NATO membership and the hints and offers to do so from Brussels-NATO, Washington and other capitals were repeated in quick succession. At the same time, Moscow repeatedly and unsuccessfully proposed mutual security agreements and President Putin telephoned and conferred with Western heads of state and government around twelve times in an attempt to avert Ukraine's NATO membership after all. When NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg then called on Putin to "return to diplomacy" on 13 December 2021, and three weeks later, on 12 January 2022, the same Stoltenberg told the Russian delegation to the NATO-Russia Council that NATO and candidate countries alone decided on NATO membership and that "no one should interfere", and when President Zelenskyi addressed Ukraine's nuclear rearmament on 19 February 2022, Moscow's point of view had reached its limit. On 24 February 2022, President Putin allowed Russian troops to march into Ukraine. Shortly after the outbreak of war, a Swiss OSCE observer in Ukraine commented on the Russian arms deliveries to the separatists reported by Polish intelligence services: "We were unable to detect any arms deliveries before the outbreak of war."

Ukraine's obviously planned NATO membership was one reason for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the eight-year-long internal Ukrainian war of separation waged by the central government in Kiev against the Russian minority was the other reason for Moscow's intervention in the civil war in the neighbouring country. In this respect, the Russian attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was not a "criminal war of aggression", but an intervention in a civil war that had been raging in the neighbouring country for eight years. As such, according to Western terminology, it was a "self-mandated" fulfilment of a "humanitarian duty to protect".
When formulating a peace treaty, given the confusing web of actions and reactions and the international, ambiguous assessment of obligations to protect national minorities beyond one's own borders, one should refrain from apportioning blame and focus the treaty exclusively on the immediate silencing of the weapons, the hasty end of the war and future ethnic-compliant borders.

The Crimea

The question is why the Western world approved the secession of 1.3 million Estonians, 2 million Latvians and 2.8 million Lithuanians from the Soviet Union in 1990, just as it approved the secession of 2.1 million Slovenes and 3.9 million Croats from Serbia in 1991 and, in contrast, condemned the secession of 2.3 million Crimeans from Ukraine in 2014 as a breach of international law?
The secession of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its subsequent accession to the Russian Federation coincided with two synchronised processes: firstly, the abolition of Russian as the second official language for the whole of Ukraine and, secondly, the Russian government's fear that it would have to cede its naval port of Sevastopol to the US Navy if developments continued.
In Crimea, 77 % of the inhabitants spoke Russian and only 10.1 % spoke Ukrainian. The Supreme Soviet of Crimea had already decided in favour of autonomy and remaining part of the Soviet Union in January 1991. The central government in Kiev did not recognise this later, in August 1991, when it made its own declaration of independence from the Soviet Union - nor had it done so before. Subsequently, in December 1991, 54 % of Crimea's inhabitants voted in a new local referendum - but again unsuccessfully - in favour of rejoining Russia. This old wound reopened on 24 February 2014 with the Ukrainian language law and the abolition of Russian as a second official language. As in eastern Donbass, unrest broke out. On 27 February 2014, Crimean President Aksyonov turned to the Russian government with a request. He asked for "assistance in ensuring peace and tranquillity on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
This was followed by another referendum on 16 March, in which 95 % of the votes cast were in favour of rejoining Russia. Observers from the OSCE, EU and UN were invited to this referendum. However, they did not turn up. The annexation of Crimea to Russia followed on 21 March. Finally, Russia deployed paratroopers (the so-called green men) to "secure" the election in Crimea. Putin invoked the "Russian duty to protect", as the USA has often done in similar cases, citing its American "humanitarian duty to protect".
In the case of Kosovo's previous declaration of independence, the UN International Court of Justice also ruled four years ago that the withdrawal of a part of a state from a state does not violate customary international law (judgement of 22 July 2010). All reasonable requirements were also met in the case of Crimea, namely a closed territory with a majority of a common nationality, the majority of which decided in a referendum against continued citizenship in their previous state and thus in favour of secession.
The second synchronised event was the dispute between the USA and Russia over dominance in the Black Sea. Ukraine's NATO membership, which the USA had publicly sought since 2008, would have meant that Crimea would have been open to the USA and closed to Russia in future. Russia would have had to relinquish its strategic maritime position in the Black Sea to the US Navy with the loss of its naval harbour in Crimea and thus also control of the sea route to Russia's largest commercial port, Novorossiysk. Ukraine's commercial harbour, Odessa, would also have been under American control. The fact that Russia's concerns were not unfounded was demonstrated by the behaviour of the USA even before Moscow intervened in the intra-Ukrainian civil war in 2022. The USA had already established its naval command "73rd Maritime Special Operations Center" in Ochakiv, 150 kilometres west of Crimea, at the mouth of the Dnieper, thus extending its maritime strategic arm to Russia's rear entrance.
The annexation of Crimea is comparable to the American defence against the Soviet missile deployment in Cuba in 1962. Back then, the USA also did not tolerate an opponent right at its back door. And what would happen if China, with Cuba's consent, prepared to take over the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? (The USA took over the base in 1934 without a treaty and without any legal basis). Comparisons are usually a little skewed, but often not skewed enough not to make it clear what is at stake.
Four days after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, on 26 March, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt described Russia's actions in Crimea as "quite understandable", albeit dangerous. He considered the subsequent Western sanctions to be "stupid stuff" and blamed the West for the situation in Ukraine.
The Western world immediately declared the secession of Crimea and its annexation to Russia in 2014 to be an annexation by force. The USA immediately imposed its first sanctions against Russia. And, while the decision-making process was still underway in Crimea, 42.37 tonnes of Ukrainian state gold were loaded and flown to the USA on 11 March 2014. (according to a Swiss source)
After President Putin's experiences with the USA and NATO, it must be assumed that he no longer trusts the West. He had experienced the ineffectiveness of verbal promises (Baker's pledge not to expand NATO eastwards in 1990), then the duplicity of NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg (first the call to "return to diplomacy" in Dec. 2021 and shortly afterwards Stoltenberg's instruction that Russia had "no say" in the eastward expansion in Jan. 2022) and over the years the American refusals to conclude new security agreements with Russia (1999-2022). Putin does not accept preconditioned requests for negotiations. He obviously needs a concrete offer, the proposal of a peace treaty with Ukraine that is negotiable for Russia. (see Annex 2)
(This chapter is written without the use of Russian sources.)

The significance of war crimes

The psychological and political impact
Committed and invented war crimes play a significant role in the war in Ukraine, both in terms of international law and war psychology. Their "commercialisation" has led to the generation of hatred and the hardening of positions on the one hand and to the generation of a willingness to help and support on the other among both warring parties and among the states and peoples supporting the war. The almost exclusively Ukrainian-influenced media coverage in the Western world - especially in Germany - has led to one-sided ideas of the enemy and equally one-sided ideas of justice and thus to an asymmetrical narrative. This manipulative friend-foe image makes it difficult today to convince the German public and German "politics" of a peace of understanding and reconciliation for Russia and Ukraine and to dissuade them from the illusion that the war is "winnable" for Ukraine.

A few corrections should therefore be added to the war crimes of which the Russians are accused and contrasted with Ukrainian war crimes. I would like to illustrate this using the examples of the "Butsha massacre" and the bombing of the department stores' in Retroville and then go into war crimes in general. Firstly, it should be noted that disinformation, propaganda and deception are among the legitimate means of war used by both the Russians and the Ukrainians.

The "Butscha massacre"
Just over a month after the start of the war, on 30 March 2022, Russian troops left Kiev and the surrounding area, including the city of Butsha, following their unsuccessful attempt to take Kiev by hand. Four days later, reports and footage of a Russian massacre in the city appeared on Ukrainian television. A memorable video film showed a Ukrainian military pickup truck with mounted soldiers driving between neatly lined up dead bodies. A camera car followed behind. The camera conspicuously faded out a corpse with the help of a grey veil as it passed close by. I noticed that the dead lay there as if neatly draped, and that they lacked the pools of blood usually seen on the slain or shot. The grey veiling of the nearest dead body made me suspicious. When I searched several times on different channels and found a video of this scene without the grey veil, I saw that this dead man was wearing a wide, very conspicuous white Russian armband. When I immediately put the film back at this point and tried to watch it a second time, it was immediately deleted. Instead, I read "This page is not available". When I tried again, I got "Link not found". Who has an interest in covering up the fact that there is a dead Russian lying here? On repeated and careful viewing of the same scene on other channels, I also found pieces of their white Russian armbands on some of the corpses lying further away.
I also found a Ukrainian video of a soldier dragging a corpse on a long rope along a road to another location. This and the lack of pools of blood fit with the suspicion that Butsha's bodies were dragged into the "picture" of Butsha days after she was killed. The whole thing was quite obviously a failed Ukrainian staging, a "false flag operation".
It is also striking that the Russian government twice subsequently requested the UN Security Council to investigate the Butsha incident and twice failed due to vetoes.
The Butscha incident crossed a threshold of absolute irreconcilability between the warring parties, including NATO, the EU, the USA and Russia, which still stands in the way of peace, reconciliation and the balancing of interests.

The Retroville department stores' bombardment
Another example of the dubious value of information from the war is the Russian shelling of the Retroville shopping centre on the outskirts of Kiev on 20 March 2022. The news itself was true. Russian artillery had shelled the department stores'. When Kiev's mayor Klitschko broadcast the "terrible" event on German television the following day and lamented the Russian war crime, German viewers were horrified by the supposed cruelty of the Russians. Normally, one associates shopping centres with crowds of people and, in this case, high numbers of victims. As the news item included a precise location, I took a closer look at the Shopping Mail on Google Earth and found the building described with large delivery entrances, a large but empty customer car park and a ring of tall residential buildings around it. By chance, I next discovered a video by a Ukrainian blogger using the keyword Retroville, which showed the same department stores', the same empty car park and the large delivery entrances. The blogger had filmed, with palpable pride, via a Ukrainian wartime ruse, artillery guns pulling out of the driveways, firing a few rounds and then retreating back under the cover of the driveways. Apparently, Russian artillery reconnaissance had also seen the same video, and the Russians had then accurately targeted and destroyed the warehouse. All in all, it was not a Russian war crime, but the psychological effect on the German television audience was enormous and so lasting that it is currently almost impossible to communicate a peace treaty in this country without apportioning blame and without punishment.

War crimes on both sides
Russian war crimes have been widely reported in the Western media. There has not been an equally sharp look at the behaviour of Ukrainian soldiers. Thus, only the videos of Ukrainian war crimes disseminated by Ukrainian bloggers on the internet at the beginning of the war, which were reported on in Ukrainian patriotic euphoria as if they were heroic deeds, help to compare the two warring parties.
But first an excerpt from the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights of 29 June 2022, which states, among other things, on war crimes: "And these include numerous abuses and killings of prisoners of war and civilians uninvolved in the fighting, which both sides are equally guilty of. Only one type of war crime can be attributed solely to the Ukrainian army: the misuse of human shields, i.e. the deployment of its own soldiers and artillery next to and behind health and care facilities in order to take advantage of their protected status."
Back to the Ukrainian violations of the laws of war. At the beginning of the war, Ukrainian television stations and bloggers themselves reported on Ukrainian violations of the law and brutalities committed against Russian citizens and prisoner-of-war soldiers as if they were glorious deeds. For example, laughing Ukrainian soldiers standing around kicked and machine-gunned shackled Russian prisoners lying in their midst. Russian prisoners of war were first beaten up, then shot in the legs and then left unattended. Shackled Russian prisoners lying in large pools of blood were kicked on the head until they gave up. Among other things, there was a scene of a Russian civilian in a car (recognisable as such with a white Russian armband) being stopped, pulled out of the car and kicked in the head with boots on the spot.
This evidence of Ukrainian war crimes does not justify making comparisons of guilt in a peace treaty and deriving disadvantages for only one of the warring parties.

The validity of the international law of war
When weighing up the mutual breaches of treaties and the violations of the international law of war by the Russians and the Ukrainians, both sides should be measured with the same yardstick, with the law that has been codified up to that point. For years, the "West" has been increasingly deviating from this in its arguments, justifications and accusations for its own benefit and instead of relying on codified international law, it is referring to a so-called "rules-based order". This is a home-made order and its rules, which the USA and its surrounding allies - i.e. excluding Russia, China, South American states and others - have tailored to their own ideas. According to this rule-based order, Kosovo's declaration of independence, for example, was in line with international law, while Crimea's declaration of independence was not. This rule-based order is in part a self-serving, Western self-deception.
The codified international law of war should apply equally to all warring parties. The Hague Regulations on Land Warfare and the Geneva Conventions have been used in an attempt to curb the atrocities of war. The protection of the unarmed civilian population and the protection of undefended towns and villages from shelling and bombing are among the protection requirements of both sets of rules.
A head of state who calls on his civilian population - as Zelensky did - to make Molotov cocktails, get guns and fight, accepts that the rules of protection for the population in his sphere of influence no longer apply. Anyone who orders his military to fortify and defend the cities is taking the calculated risk that the cities will be fought over and that they will be shot at and bombed. Anyone who proudly shows young volunteers receiving military training in a school building in front of television cameras must not complain on the same television channel about the brutality of the enemy when they shoot at such buildings.
Zelensky himself abrogated the protective provisions of the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions for civilian citizens and Ukrainian cities.

Weighing up the legal bases and legal opinions

The balancing of the right to territorial integrity against the right to self-determination and the will of the people on the basis of the two treaties "UN Resolution on the Principles of International Law ( 1970 )" and the "Charter of Paris ( 1990 )" will be part of the preamble of the present draft peace treaty.
The legal basis for many peace efforts to date, the Charter of Paris of 21 November 1990, contains two sometimes incompatible principles, namely the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states and the special protection of national minorities. The previous United Nations resolution of 24 October 1970 on the principles of international law already specified the collective exercise of minority protection. It states that national minorities can democratically decide to establish their own independent state in closed parts of their former territory or to integrate into another state if their protection rights are permanently and grossly disregarded and if they are denied adequate internal autonomy. The latter also applies to the resident Russian minorities in clearly defined parts of the former state of Ukraine, in which they form a clear local majority.
In the war to be ended, Ukraine defends its right to the inviolability of its territorial integrity and the Russian Federation defends the right to self-determination of the Russian minorities in certain parts of Ukraine where they form a clear majority of the population. The peace treaty proposed in Annex 2 is based on the practical balancing of the two incompatible peace principles in this specific case, the Charter of Paris and the UN Resolution on the Principles of International Law. It is based on a decision in favour of the right to self-determination and the will of the people as an expression of a modern democratic understanding of the state in the sense of a hasty end to the war. A contrary decision in favour of the territorial integrity of the former Ukraine was obviously no longer sensible due to the now completely broken and irreconcilable relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian parts of the previous two-nation state. After eight years of civil and separatist war within Ukraine, the two-nation state of Ukraine could no longer realistically be revived morally and politically.

Negotiations and contractual partners

Participation recommendation
It is in the interests of concluding an agreement quickly and amicably to keep the circle of negotiators and those concluding the agreement as small as possible. For the same reason, states - with the exception of Ukraine and the Russian Federation - and supranational organisations that represent their own interests in the Ukraine war and in Ukraine should not be involved in the peace process.
The peace negotiations for the Peace of Münster may serve as a cautionary example of negotiations with too many interested parties. They lasted five years, during which the fighting continued. The swift 2-plus-4 negotiations on German reunification, in which the more than 40 additional former war opponents of Germany were excluded, may serve as a positive example.
It would be hopeless for Germany to mediate peace on its own. The three states of France, Italy and Germany would be suitable for peace mediation.
France, together with Germany, had already prevented the then unjustified admission of Ukraine to NATO in 2008 and then arranged the Minsk Conferences and the Minsk Agreement again together with Germany in 2015 and 16. In 2016, it was again France and Germany together that urged Ukraine to grant the eastern oblasts the internal autonomy promised to them in the Minsk Agreement, which Ukraine refused to do. Also in 2016, the French upper house of parliament recommended the gradual withdrawal of EU sanctions against Russia. On 9 December, Macron and Merkel negotiated the Christmas ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. In 2019, it was again Macron and Merkel who organised the last summit between Putin and Selensky. On 8 February 2022, Macron called on the West to "make compromises with regard to Russia's legitimate security needs". The French president is obviously the right partner for a German peace initiative. Among the old EU and NATO states, France has also retained the greatest independence from the USA, the main representative of Ukrainian interests and its own geopolitical ambitions there.

So far, the most frequent impetus for peace mediation in the Ukraine war has come from Italy. It began on 4 May 2022 with the declarations by the head of the Italian Air Force, Lieutenant General Tricarico, and Lieutenant General Bertolini (Army) "This is not our war" and "Let's stop the USA!". This was followed by the Italian Foreign Minister Di Maio on 20 May 2022 with a peace plan proposed in the European Parliament. Then came the offer of mediation by former Prime Minister Berlusconi on 8 September 2022 and finally, on 29 June 2023, the appeal by Cardinal Zuppi, President of the Italian Bishops' Conference. A mediating role in a Russian-Ukrainian peace settlement would obviously be popular in Italy.
France, Italy and Germany are also the big three founding members of the EEC and currently the largest net contributors to the EU and therefore also indirectly the largest contributors to EU war aid. The three states would have the political clout to put a peaceful end to the EU's one-sided pro-Ukraine and war-prolonging policy. Italy, France and Germany would also have the means and opportunities to threaten to end their own continued support for the war if their mediation failed and, in extreme cases, to announce their veto on joint EU and NATO activities in the event of a continuation of the war. A peace arranged by Italy, France and Germany would be a European solution to the European war in Ukraine.
The Federal Chancellor should enter into talks with President Meloni and President Macron as soon as possible and ask both to participate politically in the German peace plan and actively with Italian and French forces in the peace process proposed in the draft treaty. These talks should be successfully concluded before the draft peace treaty can be proposed to the two parties to the conflict.

Warning against participation
The UK and USA, which are particularly interested in Ukraine joining NATO, have repeatedly demanded that the war be continued. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened in the Istanbul Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on 9 April 2022 shortly before the treaty was signed and prevented the signing of the Ukrainian treaty. His reasoning was that "the West is not ready for an end to the war." Similarly, the US government recently announced on 27 November 2023 that it currently considers Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations to be pointless. The reason given was that such talks would only degenerate into Russian "surrender monologues". In doing so, the US government deliberately overlooked the fact that Zelensky's so-called 10-point peace plan of 5 August 2023 was itself a de facto demand for Russia to surrender. The recognisable interest of the USA and Great Britain in the continuation of the war disqualifies both states as moderators, negotiating partners or signatory states for participating in the rapid end to the killing and destruction in Ukraine. They must therefore not be directly or indirectly involved in the proposed peace process, despite their expected objections and obstacles. The exclusion of the USA is also linked to the exclusion of NATO, which is dominated by the USA.

Places of negotiations
I propose that the mediation talks with the two warring parties initially take place in separate preliminary negotiations at their seats of government. This will make the talks easier because they will still lack the hardened and aggravating confrontational atmosphere of a clash between two enemies.
The final conference was to take place in Geneva, in the Old Town Hall, in the "Alabama Hall". Geneva is on neutral ground and the aforementioned hall harbours a "good spirit" that will hopefully spill over into Ukrainian-Russian understanding and reconciliation. It was in this hall that the First Geneva Convention was concluded in 1864 and the dispute between the old colonial power England and its old colony North America was settled by arbitration in 1872, paving the way for a final and everlasting friendly partnership.

The initiation of negotiations
Germany is currently one of the states that is keeping Ukraine in the delusion that there is still a chance of victory in 2024 with its promises and money and arms deliveries. Before the German government takes away the Ukrainian government's illusions of "victory" and reconquest by presenting a draft peace treaty, thereby psychologically plunging it from plus degrees to minus degrees, it should first refrain from making any further promises and call on the Ukrainian government and the Russian government to make the opposing side an offer of talks without preconditions. If the disputing parties are not prepared to do so in the near future, the peace treaty proposed here can be submitted to both parties.

Essential contents of the contract text

So far, by my count, there have been 18 few concrete mediation and treaty proposals, which have left room for different interpretations and many evasive options for both warring parties. So far, the warring parties have also mentioned "non-negotiables" as preconditions, so that negotiations have not even taken place. The proposed treaty text therefore contains all the necessary territorial, legal, economic, military and other provisions that are customary and necessary in peace treaties, so that each side can assess what it will receive and what it must give.President Putin will see that the final word on a lasting post-war order will not be spoken by the Russian land conquests, but by the result of a referendum of the inhabitants of the disputed territories. The future borders between Ukraine and Russia should be drawn freely by the population concerned. However, Russia must maintain its old nuclear response and security distance from NATO territory and grant Ukraine the status of "armed neutrality" in return.
President Zelensky will realise that the final word on a lasting post-war order will not be spoken by a final Ukrainian victory financed by the international community, but by the result of a referendum of the inhabitants of the disputed territories. By ignoring the Minsk II Agreement, the Ukrainian central government has itself gambled away the existence of the former bi-national state. The language dispute since 2014 and the eight-year civil war with its harshness and war crimes against part of the eastern Ukrainian population preclude a prosperous coexistence of Ukrainians and the strong Russian minority in one state in the future.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian people must be assured of a secure and sovereign future with the prospect of reconstruction and economic recovery. To this end, further destruction and the exorbitant growth of Ukraine's war debts for arms leasing and repayable loans to the USA must be ended. In return, Ukraine must be offered the future preservation and viability of the Ukrainian people as the core of a treaty, but not the preservation of its entire former territory.

Impact on the German public

The realisation that a rapid end to the war must take absolute priority over a victory for Ukraine is unfortunately countered by the false narrative that the German media has been conveying to the German public for three years with its good-and-evil narrative. This includes ignoring the prehistory of this war with the language dispute, with the eight-year civil war of the Ukrainian central government against the strong Russian minority in its own country and with the frequency of political murders and corruption in Ukraine. This includes the violations of international law by Ukraine and not just the breach of peace by the Russians. It also includes the legends of a democracy there and the freedom of Europe that is supposedly to be defended there. When the media make the connection to the "defence of Europe's freedom", they should also address the fact that the core issue is also the expansion of the USA's geopolitical interests and sphere of power. The recent speeches by members of the Bundestag on the war in Ukraine clearly show how deeply the false narrative is already entrenched in Germany's "political world". The appeals by several speakers on arms aid to Ukraine show their frightening and shameful ignorance of the realities in Ukraine and the prehistory of the war in Ukraine.
This false narrative is most effectively manipulated by the phrases repeated several times a day in all the media, such as "Putin's criminal attack" and the use of negative attributes that precede everything Russia does and fails to do. The German press outdoes itself with "cruel, inhuman, merciless" and many other negative descriptions instead of reporting objectively and leaving the judgement to the readers. The German government cannot control the media, but it should refrain from making its own comments in the manner described. The longer and more effectively Germany supports Ukraine and snubs the Russian side, the more difficult it will be to negotiate with Russia and ultimately keep Germany's head out of the noose of direct involvement in the war.
My proposal for a peace initiative by Chancellor Scholz under the motto "reconcile and forgive" may seem like an inconsistent change of heart to German voters after this media history. Nevertheless, the initiative would be a credible return to Chancellor Scholz's original views that Germany is in danger of becoming involved in the war and that Germany should hold back on supplying arms to Ukraine. Today, after almost two years of futile war and unsuccessful Ukrainian offensives, the German public will honour him with the realisation that Ukraine cannot achieve its war goal of reconquest and that the main task now is to protect the Ukrainian people from further human losses through death and emigration, from further destruction of its infrastructure and from the further increase in exorbitant foreign debt. The German people are currently having growing doubts about their own immense war expenditure and the simultaneous unmet financial needs at home. They see the weakening of their own economy without any noticeable effects of the embargoes and sanctions on Russia. It notes with concern the further plundering of the Bundeswehr in favour of the Ukrainian army while at the same time increasing its own obligations outside its own borders. The German people are becoming increasingly tired of the burdens of this foreign war. And the Ukrainian people are about to be "bled dry" in many respects. A peace between Ukraine and Russia brokered by a German chancellor could be the highlight of his chancellorship.

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Enclosure 4: Draft peace treaty

Annex 2 to Ukraine Letter to the public

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof

3.2.2024

Treaty to end both wars,
the internal Ukrainian civil war and
of the Ukrainian-Russian War.
Geneva Peace Treaty of ... 2024
(Text excerpt from the present full-text version)

Preamble

The Republic of Ukraine, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation, on the other hand, conclude this treaty for the urgent termination of the Russian-Ukrainian war and, at the same time, for the termination of the intra-Ukrainian war between the Ukrainian central government and the Ukrainian, but predominantly Russian-speaking parts of the country, which have unilaterally declared their independence in a dispute with the central government.

In the war to date, neither of the warring parties has been able to realise their goals and achieve a victorious end to the war. On the contrary, there is a danger of a long-lasting continuation of the war and ultimately a renewed division of Europe through an "iron curtain". Preventing this is the purpose and aim of this treaty.

The core of the treaty is the immediate end to the war on the basis of a referendum by the populations of the disputed territories on their will to belong to Ukraine, the Russian Federation or a new intermediate state independent of both warring parties in the future.

The treaty is guided by the mutual endeavour to free the population in the affected areas from the scourge of war as quickly as possible, to save Ukraine from further destruction and permanent indebtedness, to free the Russian Federation from the burdens of war and its international isolation, to establish lasting stability and peace on the Ukrainian-Russian linguistic and national border, to usher in a new era of peace among the peoples of Europe, to eliminate the worldwide supply bottlenecks caused by the war and to alleviate the ongoing famine in the poor countries of our world.

The legal basis for many peace efforts to date, the Charter of Paris of 21 November 1990, contains two sometimes incompatible principles, namely the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states and the special protection of national minorities. The previous United Nations resolution of 24 October 1970 on the principles of international law already specified the collective exercise of minority protection. It states that national minorities can democratically decide to establish their own independent state in closed parts of their previous territory or to integrate into another state if their rights to protection are permanently and grossly disregarded and if they are denied adequate internal autonomy.
The latter also refers to the resident Russian minorities in clearly defined parts of the former Ukraine, in which they form a clear local majority.

In the war to be ended, Ukraine defends its right to the inviolability of its territorial integrity and the Russian Federation defends the right to self-determination of the Russian minorities in certain parts of Ukraine where they form a clear majority of the population, and restores their minority protection. This peace treaty is based on the practical balancing of the two incompatible peace principles in this specific case, the Charter of Paris and the UN resolution on the principles of international law. The decision was made by the three mediators of this peace, Italy, France and Germany, in favour of the right to self-determination and the will of the people as an expression of a modern democratic understanding of the state, in the sense of a hasty end to the war. An opposing decision in favour of the territorial integrity of the former Ukraine was obviously no longer sensible due to the now completely disrupted and irreconcilable relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian parts of the previous two-nation state. After eight years of civil and separatist war within Ukraine, the two-nation state of Ukraine could not realistically be revived morally and politically.

This prioritises the future preservation and viability of the Ukrainian people over the preservation of the current Ukrainian territory.

The contracting warring parties refrain from attempting to offset their own legal positions and the violations of international law committed by their opponents against each other and from offsetting their opponents' and their own escalation steps that exacerbate violence against each other. This would generate further hatred through mutual accusations and protracted negotiations and unnecessarily prolong the suffering and destruction of this war. The large number and diversity of mutual breaches of international charters and intergovernmental treaties cannot be assessed against each other anyway.
The guiding principle of this peace treaty is: "forgive and reconcile". The treaty is intended to regulate future neighbourly relations between the Republic of Ukraine and the Russian Federation peacefully, permanently and as quickly as possible through a reconciliation of interests.
The President of the French Republic and the Heads of Government of the Italian Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany recognise this treaty as just, appropriate and necessary. They have proposed this treaty to the two belligerents in order to restore peaceful coexistence between the peoples of Europe and to avert the danger of war spreading throughout Europe and the North Atlantic world. Italy, France and Germany, as signatories to this treaty, will exhaust all their possibilities to persuade the warring parties to conclude and honour this peace treaty.
Germany, Italy and France will support both warring parties as far as necessary and within the scope of their possibilities in measures for the transition from war to peace.

The five signatory states hope and expect that other states will also demand and support this peace agreement.

Part I End of hostilities

Article 1
The fighting on all fronts on land, on the Black and Azov Seas and in the air end at 06:00 on the morning following the signing of this peace treaty by the President of Ukraine and the President of the Russian Federation, separately or at the agreed place of signing, Geneva. The contract becomes final and fully valid after the additional signature by the President of the Republic of France and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy and the Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and after the deposit of the peace treaty instruments ratified by the Ukrainian and Russian parliaments with the German Foreign Office in Berlin or the German embassies in Kiev or Moscow, i.e. the effective date of this contract.

Irrespective of the full effectiveness of the Treaty, the European Powers Italy, France and Germany shall abide by their Supplementary Agreement under Article 22 of this Treaty even if both or one of the belligerents violate or fail to ratify this Treaty.

Part II Waivers

Article 2
The Russian Federation shall vacate its territories in eastern Ukraine conquered since 24 February 2022, spatially up to the western border of the territories occupied by the Donbass separatists until 24 February 2022 and temporally until the final new Ukrainian and new Russian state borders have been established. The final borders will be determined after a referendum (Article 11 of this treaty).
The Russian Federation renounces future demands for the dismantling of the structural foreign NATO infrastructure in the new north-eastern NATO states to their territorial holdings from 1997, the founding date of the NATO-Russia Council. (Article IV of the NATO-Russia Founding Act contains regulations on the permanent stationing of foreign NATO forces in the former Warsaw Pact states and Soviet republics that now belong to NATO).
The Russian Federation does not lay claim to the temporarily conquered territories west of the Dnieper, including Kherson.
The Russian Federation renounces its demand for the future demilitarisation of Ukraine.

Article 3
The Republic of Ukraine renounces its intention, expressed by the President in 2021, to become a nuclear-armed power again.
The Republic of Ukraine renounces its intention to join NATO as a member. It will assume the status of armed neutrality and will not participate in any bi- and multinational exercises and military planning. It will not tolerate the stationing of foreign troops, mercenary troops, foreign military depots and staff and liaison commands on its territory. Exceptions to this are the foreign military attaché staffs at the embassies in Kiev.
Apart from its own defence industry, the Republic of Ukraine will not tolerate any arms and ammunition manufacturing companies on its territory that are wholly or partly foreign-owned or whose management is headquartered abroad.

The Republic of Ukraine renounces its intention to reincorporate the Crimean peninsula and recognises that it belongs to the Russian Federation.
Ukraine renounces its former territories east of the Lower Dnieper-Saporizhia line, the majority of which are Russian-speaking
(inclusive) - Kupyansk (exclusive), insofar as the majority of the population there decides in the referendum provided for in Article 11 of this Treaty in favour of state independence or its annexation to the Russian Federation. Ukraine shall thus cease to be a de facto divided state of two peoples.

Article 4
The storage of Nuclear weapons NATO and of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon delivery systems in general will remain excluded for Ukraine in the future in accordance with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and Article IV of the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997.
New regulations on the permanent stationing of foreign NATO troops in the former Warsaw Pact states and former Soviet republics that now belong to NATO are reserved for future negotiations and treaties between the Russian Federation and NATO.

Article 5
Safety guaranteesThe security guarantees demanded by Ukraine from external powers for its future territorial integrity and the security guarantee demanded by the Russian Federation for the preservation of its nuclear second-strike capability within the framework of a pan-European security architecture are to be regulated by subsequent international treaties. These subsequent treaties must not contradict the provisions of this peace treaty. Until the date of entry into force of this peace treaty, the Russian Federation and Ukraine shall cancel and terminate all military-security treaties and agreements with external powers that contradict this peace treaty.

Article 6
The former enemies of the war mutually waive any claims for compensationcompensation or reparations for the damage and burdens caused to each other since 2014.

Part III The transition to peace

Article 7
The Russian troops ...

Article 8
The Ukrainian troops ...

Article 9
Foreign military ...

Article 10
The former wartime enemies and the republics of France, Italy and Germany agree that the Troop disengagement and the retreat of the Russian and Ukrainian troops will be monitored and documented by Italian, French and German troop commands until a final decision is made on the future Ukrainian and Russian borders. An Italian high command on the spot shall be responsible for the supervision. (Article 23 of this treaty)

Article 11
The referendum
Article 11(1):
The inhabitants of the territories in dispute between Ukraine and Russia will decide for themselves in a referendum whether they want to continue to live in Ukraine, in an independent new state or in the Russian Federation.
The date of the vote shall be set by the Ukrainian central government no later than the 30th day after the entry into force of this Treaty for a date between the 6th and the 90th day after the entry into force of this Treaty.
All residents who were resident in the affected area in 2014 and their spouses and descendants who are at least 20 years old on election day will be eligible to vote.
The voter lists valid in 2013 apply. Eligible spouses and descendants must have registered on the local electoral rolls by the 15th day before the referendum. The date of determination and announcement of the referendum and the referendum itself must be sufficiently far apart to allow eligible spouses and descendants at least 15 days to register on the electoral rolls.
Article 11(2):
The Voting area is the territory east the lower Dnieper and the Zaporozhzhya line east of the Dnieper (including) Kupyansk (exclusively) to the state border running north-east of it ( 49° 54' 45'' north / 38° 00' 57'' east ) and west of the Russian state border in the east from 23 February 2022.
Independence or annexation to Russia is achieved with a 55 % majority of eligible voters. Where the votes in favour of independence do not reach 55 %, they are added to the votes of the other majority after an initial publication.
Article 11 Paragraph 3:...
Article 11 Paragraph 4:...
The referendum shall take place under French supervision and with French, Italian, German and OSCE assistance and monitoring. In the event of disputes over unclear election modalities or the outcome of the election, a French arbitration award shall decide in accordance with Article 23 of this Treaty.
Article 11 Paragraph 5:...

Article 12
The former enemies of the war release all their prisoners of war and civilian internees by ...
There is a general amnesty for all prisoners of war and civilian internees with Ukrainian and Russian citizenship in their ethnically different countries of detention.
Further details ...

Part IV Mutual obligations

Article 13

Article 13 Paragraph 1: The declining military of the former war opponents ...

Article 14

Prohibition of any Agitation and propaganda ...

Article 15

Article 15 Paragraph 1:

On the citizenship option ...

Article 16

To the Protection of minorities ...

Article 17

On the preservation of vested rights in the change of territorial sovereignty as a result of the referendum ...

Part V Further information

 Article 18

On economic normalisation: Irrespective of their fundamental orientation towards either the European Union or the Russian Customs Union, the former war opponents will abolish their trade and co-operation barriers with each other for the benefit of increasing the prosperity of their peoples. Treaties and agreements on duty-free or preferential tariffs for individually defined industrial goods, agricultural products and mineral resources produced mainly on their own territory should be possible again.

The former warring parties and the additional signatory powers Italy, Germany and France shall immediately return all confiscated assets of the warring parties to their original owners or reimburse them financially if they have been sold in the meantime. The five signatory states hope and expect that other states will also sign up to this regulation.

Ukraine and the Russian Federation will re-establish normal international banking connections and mechanisms for the transfer of funds between each other as quickly as possible. The settlement and payment of mutual state, business and private debts from the period before the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022 will be regulated later by a Russian-Ukrainian agreement.

More ...

Article 19

End of boycotts, embargoes and punitive sanctions: The contracting states Ukraine, the Russian Federation, France, Italy and Germany will end all boycotts, embargoes and sanctions imposed on each other since 2014 and related to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict no later than 30 days after the entry into force of the treaty. This also applies to boycotts, embargoes and sanctions previously agreed by the five signatory states together with other states. This regulation is made in the hope that other "sanction states" will follow suit.

In particular, the five contracting states shall terminate their mutual SWIFT embargo. If attempts are made to prevent this by other states, the five contracting states will execute their mutual transfer payments in a non-dollar currency via a SWIFT OPC operations centre in a neutral state or, if necessary, secure them via another clearing system.

Article 19 loses its binding force under Article 22 if both or one of the belligerents violate or fail to ratify the treaty.

Article 20

On the return of refugees ...

Article 21

The Diplomatic and consular relations ...

Part VI French, Italian and German obligations

Article 22

The Governments of the European powers Italy, France and Germany see themselves first and foremost committed to lasting peace in Europe. They see no higher-ranking reason to support the continuation and prolongation of the war, which is destroying both warring parties, in any way. They are also of the opinion that a continuation of the war makes no sense, as neither of the two warring parties is obviously in a position to achieve their self-imposed goals by defeating their opponent and by their own efforts. If the war continues, there is also a risk of the war spreading to the whole of Europe and the entire North Atlantic world.  

France, Italy and Germany therefore also see no reason to help repair the senseless war damage that will continue to occur if the war continues by participating in financial and other reconstruction aid and generally see no reason to participate directly or indirectly in post-war debt cancellation schemes for the former war opponents.

The hasty end to the war sought by this treaty should also enable Ukraine to concentrate its efforts on the reforms necessary for its accession to the European Union. The hasty end to the war should also prevent Ukraine from becoming even more dependent on the debt of foreign states through war loans and leases for supplied war material and thus becoming a "debtor state" and ballast in the European Union for decades to come.

France, Italy and Germany did not presume to play judge in the inextricable tangle of language disputes, minority rights and human rights violations, treaty violations and war crimes during the eight-year internal Ukrainian civil war until February 2022 and of mutual treaty violations, war crimes, disinformation campaigns and the military, cross-border intervention of the Russian Federation in violation of international law afterwards. Germany, Italy and France are therefore not taking sides in favour of any of the previous opponents in this peace agreement. They are acting solely in the interests of an immediate end to the war through a sensible and sustainable reconciliation of interests between the warring parties.

If the two warring parties do not decide to end their war in the interests of their suffering populations and their national right to self-determination, which also exists at regional level, the European powers Germany, France and Italy will draw their own conclusions.

To secure the peace ... More ...

The three governments also undertake to continue or resume the previous embargoes and sanctions and to block any further financial, humanitarian and military support for the two warring parties by international organisations, to which France, Italy and Germany belong, during and after the war by not giving their consent if hostilities continue or resume after the start of negotiations on this agreement. The only exception to this veto obligation will be direct medical aid.

The three governments will act in the same way if one or both of the former belligerents fail to comply with the steps and deadlines for the transition from war to peace laid down in the treaty.

Upon signing and compliance with this contract the three signatory states Italy, Germany and France will do their utmost to support the repair of war damage from the intra-Ukrainian war from 2014 to 2022 in eastern Ukraine and war damage from 2022 onwards in Ukraine as a whole. More ....

Article 23

On the organisation of troop disengagement and referendum the three governments of Italy, France and Germany agree to provide suitable troops and equipment jointly and proportionately. They will jointly allocate tasks and maintain a joint headquarters in the referendum voting area for the required duration of their deployment.

The Commander of the French contingent will be responsible for monitoring the referendum, mediating in any disputes and, if necessary, submitting a proposal for a political French arbitration ruling on the final border demarcation.

The Commander of the Italian contingent will be responsible for monitoring and documenting the repatriation of Russian and Ukrainian troops and, if necessary, initiate Italian political intervention in the event of Russian or Ukrainian breaches of contract.

The Commander of the German The German contingent will co-operate with its forces with the Italian and French contingents and keep the German government constantly informed about the progress of the peace measures. The German Government will also be responsible for the preparation and organisation of the peace conference

Part VII Final provision

Article 24

This Treaty, the Ukrainian, Russian, French, Italian and German texts of which are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the German Foreign Office.

Peace conference in Geneva ...

Date, Geneva

Signatures of the President of the Republic of Ukraine

                        of the President of the Russian Federation

                        of the President of the French Republic

                        the Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy

                        of the Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

                                     ___________________

About the author of these letters and the draft peace treaty you will find here a biography and bibliography.

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Der Beitrag Friedensinitiative und Hintergründe zum UKRAINE-Krieg erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

to part 1

to part 3

Part 2:

Consideration of the Federal Republic of Germany with regard to the separation of powers

Separation of powers and the rule of law today

As a thesis, one can attest to the Federal Republic of Germany's lack of separation of powers: The existing in the FRG Interlocking powers is in line with the principles and objectives of the Montesquieu This does not do justice to the doctrine of state organisation described above; indeed, it is disregarded. However, a distinct and practically effective separation of state powers is the basis and a prerequisite for a functioning and long-lasting constitutional state.

All too often, the fact that the "Interlocking of powers" and close co-operation between the powers of the state is described in specialist literature as a characteristic of a modern constitutional state or functioning checks and balances. A distinction must be made between the often-mentioned interlocking of powers, which usually only describes the interaction, such as the fact that the federal or state government may submit draft laws to the responsible parliament for discussion and voting, usually in consultation with parliamentary groups.

There is also the Interdependence of state powers. The interweaving of powers is a close connection that thwarts the idea of the separation of powers. In the literature on the subject, it is sometimes argued that an overly consistent separation of state powers could hinder processes, making it inappropriate or even outdated or unfeasible in modern states.

Strictly speaking, this justifies a delicate state of affairs or even describes the rejection of the principle of separation of powers for our modern states in a coded way.
The frequent glossing over or justification of an alarming state of affairs, especially with regard to the judiciary, is striking. In many cases, reference is made to the vertical and Horizontal separation of powers pointed out. The "vertical separation of powers" represents the separation between the federal and state levels in the federal state.

The Basic Law

In the German Basic Law (Basic Law, GG), the powers of the state at the federal level are described in several articles, and the separation of the powers of the state from one another is not an explicit requirement of the Basic Law.

In particular, Article 20(1) enshrines federalism, as the Federal Republic is a federal state, and Article 28(1) of the Basic Law declares that the constitutional order in the [federal] states must comply with the principles of the [...] constitutional state within the meaning of the Basic Law, which is reflected in the state constitutions. This is to be accompanied by the "vertical separation of powers".

Article 20(2) and (3) states that "all state authority shall emanate from the people" and names the three branches of government as well as their obligation to law and justice. However, the nature of the separation and independence of these state powers from one another is not explicitly described. Article 92 of the Basic Law names the judges as the holders of judicial power, and Article 97 guarantees the independence of the judges.

However, it is premature, even negligent, to conclude from these written words that the separation of state powers will be realised in reality.

The state of the judiciary in the FRG

In the reality of the Federal Republic of Germany, criticising the status quo seems to be seen as sacrilege. This became clear in 2013, for example, when in a public hearing in the German Bundestag a draft law of the Left Party (DIE LINKE) on the creation of the independence of the judiciary was discussed: "Draft law to establish the institutional independence of the judiciary" and, in connection with this, a necessary amendment to the Basic Law, "Draft ... law to amend the Basic Law - establishing the institutional independence of the judiciary". The absolute majority of those invited to the hearing Experts saw no need for reform, judged the initiative to be unnecessary or even fraught with dangers and risks. (https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2013/44141576_kw17_pa_recht_justiz-211924)

Although the Left Party's concern is certainly understandable, it was rejected in the parliamentary decision-making process.

Not only the Left Party, but later also the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) have made several statements outlining what they see as clear deficiencies in the separation of powers in the Federal Republic of Germany. For example, in a press release dated 20 February 2023, the parliamentary managing director and legal advisor of the AfD parliamentary group criticised the following Stephan Brandnerthat Election procedure for the Federal Constitutional Court judges. According to Brandner's proposal, a panel of judges could separate the legislative from the judiciary in line with the separation of powers. (https://afdbundestag.de/stephan-brandner-richterwahl-fuer-das-bundesverfassungsgericht-reformieren/) In a press release from May 2019, Brandner also criticised the lack of independence of German public prosecutors' offices, on which his party had introduced initiatives in the Thuringian state parliament and the Bundestag. (https://afdbundestag.de/brandner-gewaltenteilung-umsetzen-weisungsgebundenheit-der-staatsanwaltschaften-abschaffen/ , viewed on 3 March 2024)

The Alternative for Germany is not alone in this. The situation of the public prosecutor's office in the Federal Republic of Germany is a difficult case to analyse. European Court of JusticeECJ, a judgement worthy of note. The leader of the AfD party, Alice Weidel, has also made clear comments on deficiencies in the separation of powers in speeches and interviews, for example in a summer TV interview on ZDF in August 2022.

It is striking that in Germany, only representatives of parties that are permanently in opposition in the Bundestag make statements on the separation of powers and the rule of law, point out shortcomings in this regard and take initiatives. People or organisations that are professionally and politically established in the current system do not seem to want to shake things up. This is understandable for personal reasons: If you have successfully climbed a career ladder in a system according to its rules, you want to avoid changes to the system, as this career ladder could possibly disappear as a result.

If, over the course of several generations, responsible individuals or institutions have come to terms with a system throughout the entire structure of the state, however flawed it may be from certain points of view, it must be regarded as extremely entrenched. The will to reform has no opportunity to develop.

Only the Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag spoke out in favour of its above-mentioned bill in the recommendation of the Legal Affairs Committee, dated 26 June 2013. The BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN (Green Party) parliamentary group abstained. The other three parliamentary groups rejected the Left Party's bill. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) did not yet have a parliamentary group in the Bundestag in 2013. The Left Party's request is not unjustified in principle. Numerous experts, including lawyers, are in favour of a clear or fundamental independence of the German judiciary from the executive. However, this was not sufficiently emphasised by the experts invited to the hearing in the Bundestag. This can be explained to some extent by the rules for inviting experts to such parliamentary hearings and the reluctance of those invited to appear or speak uninhibitedly on certain topics.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the professional careers of judges essentially depend on the judgement of the ministry or minister. Judges are aware that their behaviour and working methods must be adapted to the liking of the government, a minister and possibly even certain party lines if they do not want to risk a break in their career.
This allows the government to influence the promotion or appointment of judges according to its own standards. This means that the courts cannot be assumed to be independent. In detail, the federal states have different compositions of the committees for the election of judges. In some federal states, the Ministry of Justice is involved. The composition of the committees for the election of judges is not regulated in the Basic Law. The federal states themselves decide on this, usually with the involvement of members of parliament and members of the government.

A detailed explanation of the appointment, promotion and dismissal of judges in Germany can be found in the 'Scientific Service of the Bundestag', "Appointment, term of office and promotion of judges and public prosecutors". On the legal situation in Germany with regard to ordinary jurisdiction File no: WD 7 - 3000 - 043/22; completion of the work: 31 May 2022
(https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/902980/fa44b4a2bd35820f5a087513c2bc7207/WD-7-043-22-pdf-data.pdf).

This elaboration states the following with regard to the appointment of federal judges: "Pursuant to Article 95 (2) of the Basic Law, the appointment of judges to the supreme federal courts is decided by the federal minister responsible for the respective subject area together with a committee for the selection of judges. The Committee for the Election of Judges consists of the ministers of the Länder responsible for the respective subject area and an equal number of members elected by the Bundestag for the respective legislative period ..."

Court presidents also supervise their court as ministerial officials bound by instructions and thus sit between the chairs of the executive and the judiciary. Serious critical statements on the state of the judiciary and the lack of independence were made in the first years after the founding of the FRG, without this having any consequences for further developments. (https://www.gewaltenteilung.de/gewaltenteilung-in-deutschland-die-steckengebliebene-reform/).

Personal union: the link between the legislative and executive branches - parliamentarians as part of the government

"However, legislative bodies must not fulfil an executive function in any way; they must not become tyrannical. If enforcement were taken over by those who make the laws, there would be no more freedom."

• Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, "De l'Esprit des Lois"

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Cross-power dual or even multiple functions are no exception in the Federal Republic of Germany. If you take a look at the governments in the FRG, you will find that a dual function is more the norm: A large number of Minister is currently (and was) also a member of the Bundestag.

Parliamentary state secretaries even have to be members of the Bundestag. Similar conditions apply in the federal states. This means that these Government members of the largest or most influential party groups in the coalition in the Legislature on. According to political theory, the legislature is primarily responsible for exercising control over the government in addition to participating in legislation.

But these Members of Parliament in dual function As a rule, this is of course the opposite of government control. Instead, they support "their" government from within parliament and cooperate with ministries. The "hand-in-hand working" between ministries or the government cabinet and government parliamentary groups is part of everyday business. But is this situation also legitimate in terms of the separation of powers and the rule of law?

This becomes clear in the creation and parliamentary treatment of draft laws, which are obviously introduced by the government and parliamentary coalition in agreement and joint co-operation. The Opposition has no de facto opportunity to exert any significant influence; its criticism goes largely unheard in the parliamentary process. Only in the further course of the procedure, after the vote in the Bundestag, does an often factually critical statement appear from the Bundesrat (Federal Council), insofar as its consent is required.

As members of the government are also members of parliament and of the influential coalition groups, they exert influence on the parliamentarians of the relevant coalition groups - and therefore on parliament as a whole due to the majority ratios - or work together with the coalition groups. These "Government deputies" are also entitled to vote in parliament, which illustrates the undermining of the separation of legislative and executive powers. Participation in government and voting rights in the government cabinet (EXECUTIVE) as well as in parliament (LEGISLATIVE) is not in the least compatible with the separation of powers.

It can occasionally be observed how ministers move from the government bench to their parliamentary seats in the plenary chamber. Where is the separation of state powers required for a constitutional state? The same applies to the Federal Chancellor: apparently nobody finds it disturbing when the former Chancellor, Angela Merkel (CDU, Christian Democratic Union), was part of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag or is now Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, Social Democratic Party of Germany) as the head of the executive is also a member of the SPD parliamentary group and can advocate for the government's concerns or agenda at parliamentary group meetings and is also authorised to vote in the legislature. As already mentioned, the parliamentary state secretaries a connecting roller.

With the personal interdependence between government (executive) and parliament (legislative), we find the opposite of the separation of powers. Montesquieu is being thrown overboard.
Even if the members of the government do not always make full use of these options and rights, these avenues are open to them, and when it comes down to it, the government votes in parliament.

With all of the above in mind, it should be borne in mind that often the Minister of Justice at the same time Members of Parliament This is not unusual for the Federal Republic of Germany. This means that the interweaving of powers in relation to the judiciary is complete. In the 19th parliamentary term of the Bundestag, 2017 to 2021, for example, there was one Minister of Justice at federal level, Christine Lambrecht, and two Parliamentary State Secretaries in the Ministry of Justice (Christian Lange and Rita Hagl-Kehl), all three of whom were also SPD members of the Bundestag at the time.

The Parliamentary State Secretaries (officially: "Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister", in short: ParlSt) are often the subject of public disputes. In fact, they are to be regarded as non-voting members of the government; constitutionally and formally, however, they are not. They even have to be members of the Bundestag at the same time, with the exception of the Parliamentary State Secretaries in the Chancellery and the ParlSt to the Foreign Minister, both of whom may bear the title of Minister of State.

While the main issue today is the large number of ParlSt and the associated costs (in April 2022 there were 38 - German Bundestag - Current number of Parliamentary State Secretaries: https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-890468), their office in the 1950s was a cause of public controversy in principle. Over the decades, the perception of the ParlSt shifted towards a purely material or monetary view.

The Parliamentary State Secretaries' main tasks also include representing or supporting the relevant minister in Bundestag committees or the parliamentary group's working groups. This means that the questionable function of liaising between the powers of the state is part of their job. The "Act on the Legal Relationships of Parliamentary State Secretaries (ParlStG)" regulates the details of this official relationship.

In the 20th legislative period, since 2021, the situation is similar to the 19th period. The Federal Minister of Justice, Dr Marco Buschmann (FDP), is also a member of the Bundestag. This means that this minister once again forms a link across all three branches of government: he is authorised to vote in the government cabinet as well as in the Bundestag and is also head of the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ). This gives him far-reaching powers in the judicial system. However, he "only" has one Parliamentary State Secretary (Benjamin Strasser, FDP). It is noticeable, however, that the "Traffic light coalition" - SPD, FDP, Greens - the total number of Parliamentary State Secretaries has recently increased significantly.

The function of Parliamentary State Secretaries represents an organised, additional undermining of the separation of powers, not only in the area of justice, but in all departments. From the point of view of the ministers concerned, their support and assistance function is understandable as desirable. However, measured against the standards of the rule of law, this position with its tasks and powers must at least be viewed critically and even rejected outright.

Analogue structures largely continue in the federal states. The regulations on parliamentary state secretaries are different and inconsistent in the German federal states. There is no difference in the practice that members of parliament can be members of the government at the same time. This raises the question of the meaning and effectiveness of the vertical separation of powers. Such a total linking of state powers or state organs, which according to theory should be separate, cannot be justified on the basis of practical requirements; there is not even the slightest hint of separation and independence here.

With regard to the three (traditional) branches of government, the fact that the members of governments - at state or federal level - are not only frequently also members of parliament, but often also have a special role to play within their own organisations, is a further complicating factor. Party one Leadership role or top positions and also have close ties across the federal and state levels through party memberships and connections via international network organisations, instead of a so-called vertical separation of powers.

It can have significant consequences if ministers or chancellors, as members of the parliamentary group, also have the authority to issue directives or guidelines within a large party, for example as members of the executive committee or other party committees, and from there influence two or even all state authorities with their party agenda, at both federal and state level.
The demand to maintain a separation of (party) office and parliamentary mandate is not unjustified. However, not even the Green Party, which in its first few years issued this as a bold slogan and objective, has stuck to it in the long term; the earlier declarations have fizzled out in the reality of political parties in the Federal Republic.

Other special features of the Federal Republic of Germany

The justice system as a whole must be considered separately in two complexes: The Case law (judiciary) by the courts or the judges working there - i.e. the Judicial power - and on the other hand the Public prosecutor's office. The main tasks of the public prosecutor's office include prosecution, investigation, indictment, monitoring the legality of the execution of sentences and co-operation with other law enforcement authorities - including internationally. It is obvious that objectivity and neutrality are important.

The public prosecutor's office in the Federal Republic of Germany is in any case a case worth examining in detail. However, this will only be done here to the extent necessary.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that German public prosecutors are not independent enough from the executive and are therefore no longer allowed to issue European arrest warrants. According to the ECJ ruling, one of the requirements for the execution of a European arrest warrant is that it is issued by an independent "judicial authority". This is not the case for German public prosecutors, as it cannot be ruled out that a European arrest warrant may be issued in individual cases on the instructions of the justice minister of the respective federal state. German public prosecutors are therefore not independent of the executive. In Germany, the Public Prosecutor General heads the public prosecutor's office. He in turn reports to the respective Minister of Justice of the federal state and is therefore not considered independent. The executive is authorised to issue instructions to him. (Deutsche Welle: "ECJ: German public prosecutors not independent27 May 2019") The ECJ has thus certified the dependence of this part of the judiciary on the executive.

There is also an academic debate about the extent to which the public prosecutor's office in Germany is subordinate to the ministries of the interior or (also) to the ministry of justice.

In addition, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of EuropeIn 2009, under the chairmanship of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, it issued a comprehensive report calling on Germany, alongside the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and France, to implement comprehensive reforms in the justice system. Among other things, an introductory summary of the report states that the committee demands "in Germany, the establishment of "judicial councils", as exist in most other European countries, so that judges and public prosecutors have a greater say in the application of the justice system and the exclusion of the possibility for justice ministers to issue instructions to the prosecution authorities in individual cases." Point 4.2.3. states: "in both countries, the independence of prosecutors is significantly less developed than in the UK; a clear regression in practice has recently been deplored by senior prosecutors and elected representatives of judges and prosecutors in France". (Original, English: "in both countries, the independence of prosecutors is considerably less developed than in the United Kingdom; a marked regression in practice has recently been deplored by senior prosecutors and elected representatives of judges and prosecutors in France„)

The following recommendation is summarised for Germany under point 5.4. and the associated sub-points - English-speaking Original:

The Assembly calls on Germany to:
5.4.1. consider setting up a system of judicial self-administration, taking into account the federal structure of the German judiciary, along the lines of the judicial councils existing in the vast majority of European states, as a matter of securing the independence of the judiciary in future;
5.4.2. gradually increase the salaries of judges and prosecutors and to increase the resources available for legal aid (as recommended for France in paragraphs 5.3.2. and 5.3.3. above);
5.4.3. abolish the possibility for ministers of justice to give the prosecution instructions concerning individual cases;
5.4.4. strengthen in law and practice the supervision by judges of the exercise of the prosecutors' increased powers, in particular in the fight against terrorism

Translation of (with apologies if this appears a second time in the English version):
The Assembly calls on Germany to,
5.4.1. to consider the establishment of judicial self-administration, taking into account the federal structure of the German judiciary, modelled on the judicial councils that exist in the vast majority of European countries, in order to safeguard the independence of the judiciary in the future;
5.4.2. gradually raise the salaries of judges and public prosecutors and increase the funds available for legal aid (as recommended for France in points 5.3.2. and 5.3.3.);
5.4.3. abolish the possibility for the Minister of Justice to issue instructions to the public prosecutor's office for individual cases;
5.4.4. to strengthen judicial supervision of the exercise of the public prosecutor's extended powers, particularly in the fight against terrorism, both in law and in practice. (Report: Document 11993, 7 August 2009: https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/xref/xref-xml2html-en.asp?fileid=12276&lang=en; https://www.gewaltenteilung.de/europarat-pressemitteilung/)

If the Federal Republic were to become a candidate for EU membership today, the situation of the judiciary would certainly be an obstacle and the FRG a questionable candidate for accession. Since Germany was one of the founding members of the EEC, EC and thus the EU, this was never an issue. The current demands for reform are being tacitly ignored. They found no resonance in this country and went under with the few press reports at the time.

It is remarkable how, in view of the situation here, other countries, such as Poland or Hungary, are accused of making the judiciary dependent and jeopardising the rule of law because of their judicial reforms. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the first step should be to work on Rule of law in one's own country or to establish them at all before pointing the finger at other countries.

The horizontal and vertical separation of powers in the FRG

The traditional separation of powers into the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government is Horizontal separation of powers refers to. In a federally organised state such as the Federal Republic of Germany, these should be found at federal level as well as in the federal states.

The Vertical separation of powers describes the division between the federal and state levels in the federal state, in the Federal Republic of Germany between the federal level and the federal states. This type of state structure is intended to balance the powers across the federal levels. However, this could only work if these levels also had a certain degree of separation and independence from each other and there were no major "bracketing effects" between the federal and state institutions.

The Federal Council

The Federal Council As a second chamber of parliament at federal level, it assumes the parliamentary representation of the federal states. Some Western states have a second parliament (a second chamber) or a bicameral parliament. In the Federal Republic of Germany, however, the Bundesrat, as the second chamber of parliament and federal legislative body, is not directly elected by the citizens. Instead, the Bundesrat is made up of members of the governments of the federal states, usually the minister presidents and other government representatives of the federal states. The federal states each delegate three to six members to the Bundesrat, depending on their size.

Provided that Opposition groups have a political "foot in the door" at federal level (in the Bundestag) through government participation in one or more federal states, they may be able to influence legislative decisions at federal level via the Bundesrat. The consent of the Bundesrat is required for new federal laws that require approval. However, the Bundesrat itself can also submit draft federal laws to the Bundestag.

The extent to which the Federal Council consolidates the vertical separation of powers and actually fulfils an intermediary role between the federal and state levels cannot be described with certainty in a nutshell. It is highly likely that there is a consensus that without the Bundesrat, the deficiencies in the separation of powers described above would be more serious. However, here too, the parties form the link between the powers and the political federal and state levels. Party interests and party silos weaken a political system based on the separation of powers unless they are stopped.

The Federal Constitutional Court

The Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) of the Federal Republic of Germany plays a special role in the attention it receives from politicians and the media and has an essential function. It is comparable to the constitutional courts of other countries, but has a particularly high status. As a rule, decisions of the constitutional courts or constitutional tribunals in most countries are only of a recommendatory nature. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the decisions of the Constitutional Court are legally binding.

The German Federal Constitutional Court is divided into two chambers of 8 members each. Half of its 16 members, the federal constitutional judges, are appointed by the Bundestag and half by the Bundesrat through nomination and election. After the election, the elected members are sworn in as constitutional judges by the Federal President. However, the right to nominate candidates is reserved for the parliamentary groups, with the parliamentary groups of the so-called people's parties, SPD and CDU/CSU, traditionally taking turns to nominate candidates. With a certain regularity, however, they cede the right of nomination to the Alliance Greens (B90/The Greens) and the FDP. As a rule, the SPD occasionally leaves a proposal to the Greens and the CDU/CSU to the FDP.

As can be seen from this, the right to nominate candidates goes to the two current Opposition parties, THE LEFT and AfDover. (How this will develop in the future with the newly emerging parties, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance and the ValuesUnion Party remains to be seen. An opposition that is growing in numbers and importance cannot continue to be suppressed in this way).
Their candidates would not have a chance of being elected anyway, which is safe to say with the required two-thirds majority.

It is not possible to apply as a candidate yourself, which means that parliamentary groups or parties - certain parties - are solely responsible for selecting candidates. It is therefore entirely up to the leading, established party factions in the Bundestag - and thus indirectly to the party headquarters of some parties or party-affiliated representatives in the Bundesrat - to determine the highest judges of the Federal Republic.

As you can see from this one example Party affiliation and party-affiliated localisation play a significant role in the Election of constitutional judges and thus the composition of the supreme court as a whole. And not only that: it is also questionable from the point of view of the traditional separation of powers if the legislature appoints important members of a key area of the judiciary without at least having an external right of nomination or the opportunity to freely apply to become a constitutional judge.

In addition, the Federal Constitutional Court is supposed to scrutinise the executive as well as the legislature. However, if the legislature, in conjunction with the executive, itself appoints or elects the constitutional judges who control it and these judges were often previously members of parliament themselves, this control can be characterised as weak. A questionable connection of interests or a contradiction to the claim of separation of organs and persons is obvious here.

It is also tricky when the Bundesrat, as a legislative body made up of representatives of the executive (the federal states), elects the other half of the constitutional judges and the influence of the same parties comes to bear as they have majorities in the Bundestag as well as in the state parliaments and form the governments.

In any case, this way of selecting judges for the highest court calls into question the principles of the rule of law. This is not to say that this control of the legislature and executive by the Federal Constitutional Court is excluded, but it must be regarded as insufficiently established due to the system, and there is a risk of alignment with party and government lines as well as government objectives.

In recent years, there has even been increasing criticism that the BVerfG is encroaching on the legislature, i.e. in the opposite way, as one must fear from the above description. Professor Dr Dr h.c. Dietmar Willoweit: "Today, it is obvious to defend the independence of the legislative power against presumptions of jurisdiction. It has gained so much ground at the expense of parliament that doubts must arise as to the constitutional admissibility of judicial practice." And Willoweit continues: "There is no need for individual evidence here to recall such well-known phenomena as the invention of new fundamental rights by the BVerfG or the instructions of this court for legislation that conforms to the constitution." (JuristenZeitung, 17th year, 6 May 2016, p. 431).
It is open to speculation to what extent these assaults or presumptions only appear as such on the surface but are possibly based on agreement or arrangements in the background. In any case, this phenomenon is highly questionable.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution - VS

Another special feature of the FRG: the offices for Defence of the constitution (Verfassungsschutz, VS for short). In addition to the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is the VS with its network from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) one of the secret services of the Federal Republic of Germany. Both the state offices for the protection of the constitution and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution are managed by President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is nominated by the Federal Minister of the Interior in consultation with the Federal Cabinet, i.e. the Federal Government, and subsequently appointed by the Federal President. The BfV President is appointed for an indefinite period of time. He can only be dismissed by the Federal President at the request of the Federal Government or at the suggestion of the Federal Minister of the Interior. The President of the BfV therefore reports directly to the Federal Government.

The situation is similar in most federal states with the presidents of the state offices for the protection of the constitution. Here, a new president is proposed for the respective LfV in consultation between the government cabinet and the interior minister, i.e. after consultation within the state government. In some federal states, the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is elected by the state parliament. One difference to the federal level is that the new President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is appointed by the Interior Minister of the federal state itself. Given the key and high-profile role of this secret service, its influence and its often criticised and mostly non-transparent way of working, this direct appointment by the state parliament is not a good idea. connection as well as the dependence of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the executive to view.

The German public was made aware of the inadequacy of this election procedure for the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2018 through the influence of then Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel used her influence to prevent the candidate Armin Schuster, who was already considered a certainty due to previous agreements between the Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, and some leading members of parliament. Schuster was apparently unpopular with Merkel because he had criticised her immigration and refugee policy in the past. As a result, Thomas Haldenwang (CDU) was appointed as the current President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Haldenwang attracts attention from the outset because he makes it clear in words and deeds that he is fighting right-wing opposition on a massive scale. He openly declares war on certain opposition groups and acts accordingly in an offensive and high-profile manner.

Since its inception, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been accompanied by scandals. Abuse of the influence of the offices for the protection of the constitution against the opposition or certain media or individuals is also a frequent accusation and has been proven in some cases.

One of the working methods of the VS is to infiltrate so-called "V-men", today usually referred to as "V-people". V-man stands for "confidant". V-men are undercover investigators who are often recruited as liaisons and often belong to the organisation being investigated or spied on or the associated environment or are infiltrated there in a planned manner. However, their task is not only to investigate and spy, i.e. to obtain information, but also to actively engage in criminal activities in order to remain undetected, maintain trust and even exert far-reaching influence on events and people.
This became public in the well-known case of the failed NPD ban proceedings from 2001 to 2003 (NPD - National Democratic Party of Germany). The Federal Constitutional Court rejected the application to ban the party because the extensive activities of the VS within the party made it impossible to distinguish which actions and statements were actually the activity of the NPD itself and which were due to the activities of infiltrated Verfassungsschutz V people. This means that through years of activity, apparently even decades, the VS has significantly influenced and shaped the party itself in a way that fundamentally moulded its character and nature, which means that it is or was to a large extent a product of the VS rather than undergoing an independent development.
It is impossible to understand how this party would have looked and developed without the work of the VS. It is reasonable to assume that the NPD would have been a different party without the VS.

This is just one example of many that, when measured against constitutional standards, must give rise to serious doubts about the meaning and purpose and, above all, the working methods of this German domestic intelligence service or intelligence network. And it is therefore particularly difficult when government politicians and indirectly party functionaries are able to influence such an organisation and there is a serious lack of transparency.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (VS) was founded in 1950 on the initiative of the three Allied High Commissioners of the occupying powers in the Western occupation zone and the still young Federal Republic of Germany.
Doubts about the purpose, working methods and methods as well as possible misuse of the VS come from various sides, from different political camps or parties.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is increasingly confronted with the accusation that it is protecting the major parties but not the constitutional order in the country. It is also accused of acting unilaterally, Government protection and means of Fighting the opposition is explained. The extent to which these evaluations and assessments are justified needs to be analysed in detail. In any case, it is highly questionable that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, both at state and federal level, reports to the respective government and that the responsible government can appoint the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It is no secret that governments or interior ministers (in the case of Berlin, the interior senator) have sometimes issued direct instructions to offices for the protection of the constitution. Such cases have been publicised. Such a large and influential domestic intelligence service must not be firmly linked to the executive in this way. This also means that the parties close to the government have influence.

Critics of the VS and its actions include constitutional lawyers, representatives of some parties and also the left-wing lawyer and civil rights activist Rolf Gösser, who was observed by the VS for 38 years due to "contact guilt". A final judgement by the Administrative Court of Cologne in 2011 found that the long-term surveillance of Gösser by the VS was unlawful.
This judgement was confirmed in 2018 by the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster. Such cases are not isolated instances. Rolf Gösser himself compares the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and its methods with the state security of the GDR (Staatssicherheit, StaSi).

Political parties

As there was no parliamentarianism and no political parties as we know them today in Montesquieu's time, political parties and their factions in parliaments could naturally not be taken into account in his theories. The reality of state and social structures has developed towards more complexity and thus deviates in part from the ideals and assumptions of Locke and Montesquieu. If we want to theoretically discuss the current situation of the rule of law and state structure, measured against today's realities, we cannot avoid considering other forces in addition to the three state powers described by Montesquieu. These forces must be considered as additional factors in the overall structure of state and international mechanisms of action. Parties are one such factor.

In modern states, political parties form a link between the powers of the state. They are often ascribed the role of a further force or power with a critical finger pointing, as their representatives fulfil tasks or exert influence in all areas of state structures and strongly influence the opinion-forming of the electorate, alongside the leading media.

In recent years, the role and the various opportunities for parties to exert influence have been increasingly criticised in Germany.
The well-connected members or leaders of parties - mainly the larger, established parties - are represented in parliaments, governments, councils (e.g. broadcasting councils of the public media institutions), administrations and have connections to other influential organisations and multipliers (lobby organisations, associations, federations, political non-parliamentary groups and others). The sphere of influence of parties or certain important party members extends into the economy or media, or they are networked with increasingly influential, internationally active non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In many countries, especially in Germany, party affiliation or at least a good connection to certain parties is also decisive for appointment to certain judicial positions or a successful career as a judge, as explained above. As far as public prosecutors are concerned, the situation is similar in the FRG. Especially in the Federal Republic of Germany, the position and influence of the parties cannot be overestimated. In 'Konrad Duden: Richterwahl und parteipolitische Einflussnahme - Vergleichende Anregungen zum Schutz der Unabhängigkeit des Bundesverfassungsgerichts und der obersten Bundesgerichte' (German), the author makes an international comparison between the situations in different countries and possible dangers of the influence of strong parties (Konrad Duden, 'Richterwahl und parteipolitische Einflussnahme. Comparative suggestions for the protection of the independence of the Federal Constitutional Court and the supreme federal courts'; ISSN 0033-7250 - © 2020 Mohr Siebeck. - here online to find.

Last but not least, party proportionality and parliamentary group strength have an impact on numerous committees. These include parliamentary committees. These are filled according to the size of the party parliamentary groups, which means that the larger parliamentary groups, which generally form the governing coalition and are therefore naturally close to the government, also have a preponderance in parliamentary committees. This marginalises the influence of the opposition groups, which have fewer votes, in such committees that are important for the parliamentary, legislative role, as is also the case in parliamentary votes and allocated speaking time or the right to make proposals. The long arm of the government thus extends far into parliament.
Of course, it can be argued that this balance of power reflects the will of the voters. In parliamentary reality, however, it is clear that the opposition is in many respects at a loss compared to the coalition parties and that, as a consequence, the will of the voters of opposition parties is at best insufficiently recognised. This suppression of the will of the voters can be particularly pronounced when two or even three parliamentary groups deliberately push relatively strong opposition groups into a corner via coalitions.

According to Article 21 (1) sentence 1 of the Basic Law, the parties participate in the decision-making process of the people. The Basic Law thus grants the German parties the status of a constitutional body. What sounds so harmless here has been a far-reaching reality in Germany for decades in an exaggerated form.
This is supported by the now lavish state funding of political parties in the form of a lump sum for election campaign costs, donation subsidies and, last but not least, the funding of party-affiliated foundations (in most cases actually organised as registered associations) - all together around 800 million euros per year, of which 20 parties receive funding. Of course, the majority of this goes to the parties in the Bundestag; of these, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) receives by far the smallest share, as its party-affiliated foundation currently receives no funding and efforts are openly being made to maintain this in the future, contrary to the usual rules and practices.
It will now be exciting to see how the newly founded parties will be dealt with in the coming years: The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the spin-off from the CDU, the Values Union Party (Werte Union).

The well-known German constitutional law expert Professor Hans Herbert von Arnim has achieved the repeal of many laws through successful lawsuits, writings and expert opinions on party finances, parliamentary salaries and the remuneration of members of government. Hans Herbert von Arnim has also put his finger in the wounds with numerous books over the decades. He is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable and influential critics of the influence and financing of parties and the party felt in Germany. In his most recent book "Die Angst der Richter vor der Macht" (The judges' fear of power), first published in 2015, new edition 2020, von Arnim once again gets to the bottom of the problem based on his experiences, including criticism of the Federal Constitutional Court.

The profound interlinking of state powers - in connection with the parties' influence on the opinions, knowledge and ideological orientation of the population - creates a system that is sometimes referred to as "articulated democracy". Former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker declared in an interview in 1992: "The parties have made the state their prey", the parties are "obsessed with power".

Has Germany really learnt from history?

In this country, reference is all too often and fervently made to recent history - the 'Third Reich' and the 'German Democratic Republic' (GDR). We should learn from the mistakes of the past, it is repeated from various sides on all conceivable and also less appropriate occasions.
Today, the Basic Law and de facto the entire state system assigns parties, of all things, such a degree of influence as described above.

As a lesson from history, it is imperative to keep a watchful eye on parties, their hierarchies and influence and the urge to dominate the state! Did not the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (NSDAP) - authorised by parliament - implement a dictatorial leader principle combined with party rule from 1933 onwards? In 1933, referendums in this far-reaching form would not have been able to achieve anything like this; indeed, it is possible that the seizure of power would not have taken place through direct democracy. From this we can conclude that even democratically established parliaments are no sure bulwark against the emergence of a dictatorship.

Likewise, the GDR was a party state, which, also as an arbitrary rule with the Socialist Unity Party (SED), created and maintained a party dictatorship. As in all dictatorial, socialist and communist states, the party and its functionaries were at the centre, and they were able to act largely untouched by constitutional structures, ordered by separate state powers and the distribution of power.
What both systems have in common is that, in the absence of a separation of powers, the party leaders, party cadres and party functionaries directed state affairs and processes, determined careers, controlled ministries, the judiciary and secret services and thus realised a totalitarian form of rule.

It becomes dangerous for a constitutional state and thus for freedom and justice when relatively small groups of people, inspired by the belief that they are doing the only right thing and have history or morality on their side, can push through their ideological or personal goals largely unchecked.

The fact that there is a lack of critical awareness in Germany of all places today of the dangers that can emanate from parties and party power leads to the conclusion that the endeavour to learn from history is obviously being ignored in some respects. However, we need to be more specific here. The dangers of parties are often pointed out today when it comes to opposition parties. As far as the existing structures and the influence of the established parties that have existed for decades are concerned, people are blind in at least one eye.

Other external forces and influencing factors

In an increasingly complicated political world with further national but above all international or supranational players, an expanded view of important influencing factors and institutions relevant to decision-making and today's important additional forces must be considered in detail:
The EU and other supranational organisations of which a country is a member or with which it is contractually bound (e.g. UN with all its sub-organisations, NATO, OSCE, etc.),
Non-governmental organisations,
Transatlantic and supranational network organisations,
Lobby organisations.

Of course, it is important to question the extent to which the EU's influence on political processes and legislation in the European member states can be justified under the rule of law. It also has a massive indirect influence on opinion-forming and social development.

Just because citizens have been told for decades that the progression of "European integration" to such an extent is progressive, important and would serve certain noble goals and promote peace and the economy, this does not mean that the increasing all-encompassing influence of the EU Commission and the ECJ and other institutions on all areas of life and the associated Dismantling state sovereignty and rule of law can be legitimised. After all, unelected persons, some of whom are hardly known to the citizens, exercise a power over politics in the member states that is highly questionable.

This must also be scrutinised if the German Federal Constitutional Court approves such "progress". In this context, it is important to consider the independence and objectivity of the Federal Constitutional Court. Above all, it should not be overlooked that the European Union itself does not have a sufficiently democratic structure that conforms to the rule of law: Key EU officials are not democratically elected - the composition and working methods of the influential Commission are not subject to the co-determination of voters in the member states and lack transparency. On the other hand, the sovereignty and powers of democratically determined state bodies are being undermined. Certainly, the value and impact of the EU and its various institutions cannot be dealt with conclusively here; that is not the task of this paper. However, it is clear that the EU itself and its influence must also be viewed critically if the rule of law and the state of the separation of powers in the European states are to be analysed.

to part 3

Der Beitrag Bundesrepublik Deutschland am Scheideweg – Ohne Gewaltenteilung kein Rechtsstaat – Teil 2 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.

by K. Mader, March 2024

Introduction

The new ideas of John Locke and Baron Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, known as Montesquieu for short, had a significant influence on political and social developments in Europe and later in other parts of the world in connection with the ideas and theories of the Enlightenment.
The modern principles of a constitutional state with a certain separation of powers and the rule of law are reflected after the independence of the USA. The 13 founding states on the east coast of the USA drew up a constitution modelled on the English Bill of Rights from the 17th century as well as the constitution of the "Republic of the United Netherlands". "The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands", as they called themselves in full, was founded as early as 1581, during the Netherlands' eighty-year war of independence against the Spanish Habsburgs. However, its constitution was not a coherent constitutional text regulating the state order. Due to its structure as a federal union into a federal state, the early Netherlands was a suitable model for the USA when it was founded. The Constitution of the United States of America was adopted in September 1787 and came into force for the 13 united founding states in March 1789.

However, the separation of powers has only been realised to a limited extent in the USA. Instead, the principle of "checks and balances" was applied, which is based less on a separation of the three classic state powers and more on an interlocking of powers with mutual control, as in almost all Western countries today. A consistently realised separation of powers is referred to in English as a "separation of powers" or "division of powers". It is important to note that the separation of powers according to Montesquieu's theoretical guidelines is not consistently realised in almost all states. However, this is more clearly realised in some countries than in others, where at least the judiciary is independent, which must be seen as a core concern based on experience and theory.

We are told or taught as a matter of course and without critical scrutiny that Western countries have an adequate separation of powers that fully satisfies the principles of the rule of law. But is this really the case? What is the situation in the Federal Republic of Germany in this respect? The following three-part article will get to the bottom of this.

Part 1: The history of the separation of powers and the modern constitutional state

A look at the history of modern congestion theory

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieuborn in January 1689 in a castle near Bordeaux, was a lawyer, writer, philosopher and state theorist and travelled through numerous European countries. Charles-Louis de Secondat stayed in England for several years.

He was a well-known thinker of the The Age of Enlightenment and was guided by the ideals of the still young humanism. He is regarded as one of the leading founders of modern state theory. It describes the separation of the three essential powers of the state to balance rule on the one hand and the ruled citizens on the other as a fundamental component of a constitutional state. Montesquieuas he is known for short, thus creates an alternative concept to the French Absolutism of his time.

The Frenchman Montesquieu was inspired by the Englishman John Locke (1632-1704), who at the end of the 17th century had studied the doctrines of the state in detail. Locke assumed that the abuse of power could only be prevented by the Government power or state authority divided into different hands lies.
Only one Constitution and equally binding for all Lawsalso for the monarch or the government, as well as the Separation of state powers limited the powers of the head of state and prevent arbitrary rule.

In his work "The spirit of the laws" ("De l'esprit des lois"), Montesquieu published his theory of the state in 1748, which is still known today and which independent state powerswhich control and respect each other, as significant. To this end, he first analyses three forms of rule: Democracy, Monarchy, Despotism.

According to Montesquieu's doctrine, the three powers must, in the exercise of their activities independently of each other and must not be subject to external constraints. The three branches of government and their tasks are probably familiar to most people from school lessons. They are the legislative power (Legislature), the executive power or the Government and administration (Executive) and the judicial poweri.e. judges or courts (Judiciary). In a modern state, the task of legislative power generally falls to parliament. Bills are introduced for discussion and voting either by parliament itself or by the government.

What are the characteristics and principles of a constitutional state?

In this paper, the focus will be on the Separation of powers as a essential characteristic of the rule of law laid down. In order to illustrate the importance of the separation of powers for the rule of law as a prerequisite for the stability of such a state, other foundations of a constitutional state are summarised and briefly explained below.
A constitutional state is a form of government in which the state structure is designed to limit the power of the state and state organs by means of constitutional principles and in which the laws are equally binding for all citizens and institutions, including the government. Various features and a coherent organisational structure ensure that there is no slippage into a Arbitrary rulewhich Despotismis prevented.

It must be ensured that no group of people can gain advantages over others or is systematically granted such advantages, or that certain citizens are disadvantaged. The emergence of totalitarianism and dictatorship can only be prevented through consistent adherence to the principles of the rule of law.
There are certain indispensable features that characterise a constitutional state.
The supremacy of lawIn a constitutional state, the law is above all else. Everyone, including all institutions and the government, is bound by the law and must abide by it.

A constitutionIt regulates the internal order of a state and sets the framework for legislation and the relationship between state organs and citizens.
The protection of fundamental rights: Fundamental rights are enshrined in the constitution and form the constitutional basis. A constitutional state guarantees the respect and protection of the fundamental rights of all citizens equally. This must apply to both legislation and the administration of justice.

The separation of powersA constitutional state has a separation of powers. The executive, the legislature and the judiciary have clear, different functions and are institutionally and personally separated from each other in order to ensure mutual control and a balance of power.

Publicity and transparencyTransparent governance and open access to information promote accountability and democratic control of government.

No arbitrary exercise of powerThe government, its officials and all state institutions must not exercise their power arbitrarily. Instead, they must abide by the law and act in accordance with the constitution.

Independent courtsIndependence of the judiciary is an indispensable feature of the principle of separation of powers and is also a prerequisite for the rule of law. The courts are independent both in terms of their staffing and their working methods, whereby they are subject to the constitution and the law. Arbitrary justice must be ruled out.

Legal certaintyThe laws are predictable, in line with the fundamental rights of the state and the prevailing moral understanding among citizens. Legislation must not run unreasonably counter to citizens' security of action and planning. Legal norms should not be changed frequently and unpredictably in order to ensure trust and predictability in all areas of life. Laws are formulated clearly and comprehensibly without leaving room for ambiguity or room for interpretation, and laws are applied equally to all citizens in the administration of justice. Changes should only be made in exceptional cases and with appropriate transitional periods.

The following applies Prohibition of retroactivityThis means that laws may not be applied retroactively to ensure that citizens are only held accountable for actions that were already prohibited or regulated by law at the time of the offence.

Roman law had a significant influence on the development of legal systems in many countries, particularly initially in continental Europe. Our current understanding of legal certainty is characterised by this. Further characteristics of legal certainty are

• Right to due process - Every citizen has the right to a balanced, fair and impartial trial in court when faced with criminal charges or other legal disputes. "This also includes the right to be heard. This means that everyone in court proceedings has the right to comment on the allegations, present evidence, call witnesses and consult a legal adviser. The right to be heard also applies in criminal proceedings. The defendant must be given the last word before sentencing so that they can comment on the allegations made." (https://www.juraforum.de/lexikon/rechtsstaat)
• Legal protection and legal remedies - A constitutional state ensures that citizens whose rights have been violated have access to effective remedies to redress these violations and obtain justice.
• Proportionality - The principle of proportionality states that the means used by state authority must be proportionate to the end pursued. This means that the state should not use disproportionate means in the fulfilment of its tasks and the pursuit of its goals that do not justify the goal or have disproportionate side effects. The principle of proportionality also applies to police action. Coercive measures may only be taken by the police in exceptional cases or by court order (ibid.). The actions of the police or other regulatory authorities are subject to the law; arbitrary actions are thus excluded.

Freedom of information and expressionPress and media relations Media freedom are also important components of the rule of law. These enable citizens to obtain information from freely accessible sources without hindrance, to express their opinions and views without fear of persecution and to take a critical look at political decisions in general, the government or the situation in the country or worldwide. In a state governed by the rule of law, citizens are also allowed to disseminate relevant information and views. There is no censorship and there are no negative consequences for the dissemination of news, knowledge, expertise and opinions, even if they are based less on verifiable facts than on assumptions or subjective perceptions. Limits are set by law; however, these limits must be broad enough not to undermine the fundamental right to freedom of opinion and speech. There must be no censorship "through the back door" by means of disproportionately restrictive legislation. These limits can be set, for example, by defamatory allegations against certain individuals and clearly demonstrable calls for violence.

Media are obliged to exercise journalistic diligence, but not to adopt a particular stance towards the government or political or social groups and must not be subject to the constraint of being bound by opinions. Today, this applies regardless of whether they belong to the traditional print or radio media, large publishing houses, the public, state-affiliated sector, smaller media companies or freelance journalists, who can now also be found on the Internet and often use the new or new media. alternative media shape. Small and independent media companies must not be allowed to operate in favour of large or even state-owned media companies (in Germany Institutions under public law) are disadvantaged.

These characteristics are fundamental to the functioning of a constitutional state and ensure that the government and administrations act within the law and respect and protect the dignity, rights and freedoms of citizens.

The time before the rule of law, Montesquieu's ideas

The outstanding objectives described by Montesquieu are, on the one hand, the greatest possible political Freedom of citizens and beyond that the Prevention of despotismthat is, arbitrary rule, as it was during his lifetime in the Absolutism France was not only manifested there. The time of the Feudalism in Europe, from the early Middle Ages until well into the modern era, was characterised by a society of estates in which arbitrariness or despotism could emanate from individuals, their confidants or those in authority (e.g. feudal lords).

There was usually little or no provision for limiting or regulating the exercise of power. Dependent estates, such as peasants, thus lived as unfree. The exercise of governmental power, from legislation, instructions for imprisonment and interrogation (including torture) to the administration of justice or sentencing and instructions for execution could be issued by one person or a group, a committee. The same applied to state finances, which were usually inextricably linked to the private assets of a ruler, the levying and collection of taxes or the conduct of war. This was supplemented by a further system of rule and oppression: that of the church.

This religious rule and exercise of power were closely interwoven with state rule by regents or feudal lords. According to Montesquieu's ideal Abuse of power prevented and arbitrariness up to and including state terror. This objective must still be valid today in order to prevent a state from "tilting" towards Despotism or totalitarianism to prevent it. There is hardly any state structure that is inherently and forever firmly established and immune to developing from a constitutional state that guarantees freedom into a despotism.

Revolutions led to a new despotism and a reign of terror

Although this is a bit of a stretch, one thing should not go unmentioned. This explanation of the history and times of absolutism should not obscure one thing: The end of absolutism and feudal rule through Revolutions by no means brought about redemption or liberation and a constitutional state. The French Revolution of 1789 paved the way for the great terror of the Jacobin revolutionaries after a first great bloodbath in which many innocent people fell victim. One name is probably familiar to everyone in the context of tyranny: Maximilien de Robespierre, who was the head of the Reign of Terror from 1790 until his violent death in 1794.

As a result of the Revolution, the hell of arbitrary rule broke loose on a large part of the French population; without proper interrogation or trial, people were imprisoned on mere suspicion or on the grounds of class, executed en masse and subjected to extremely cruel warfare against French regions. People were tortured to death; fanaticism and barbarism were indescribable. From the revolution came the chauvinistic nationalism and War across Europe emerged. And as a paradox of history, it later crowned itself Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor in 1804. As a result of the revolution, which was directed against the monarchy, France now had an emperor instead of an emperor. Kings one Emperor.

The Russian Revolution was no less absurd in its aftermath; the Russian tsar was followed by bloodshed and the arbitrariness of the Bolsheviks and the construction of the Soviet Union. For decades, this was different from the time in Tsarist Russia, but in memory of the millions of victims of this communist tyranny, one can by no means speak of a better state or progress.

Violent revolutions lead from misery to ruin - as much as some may glorify them, they do not bring about a constitutional state.

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Nor is there liberty if the judicial power is not separated from the legislative and executive powers. ... All would be lost if one and the same man or body, either of the most powerful or of the nobles or of the people, exercised the following three powers: enacting laws, putting public resolutions into practice, judging crimes and private disputes.

• Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, "De l'Esprit des Lois" (From the spirit of the laws")

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The publication of his work "The spirit of the laws" triggered fierce, controversial debates at the time. The Vatican placed the book on a prohibition index. Montesquieu wrote a defence. The Prussian king Frederick the Great was fond of Montesquieu and his work. The The spirit of enlightenment was highly respected in the Prussian royal family. This had a personal history:
The King Frederick II, the Greatused to work with the French philosopher Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire from 1736 until his death in 1778, characterised by occasional mutual admiration and inspiration, but also occasional disappointment and dislike. Voltaire spent extended periods of time at the court of the Prussian king. In this way, Enlightenment ideas and the ideals of the Humanism It entered German territory long before the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte's destructive French military campaigns through Europe following the Revolution, which paradoxically led to the violent spread of these ideals with weapons, barbarism and destruction.

The theory of the past and the reality of today

At school, in universities or on other occasions, we citizens are usually told that the separation of powers has been implemented in today's modern Western states, that it determines the political reality in our countries and thus manifests the rule of law. But if you take a closer look at the reality and examine the specialist literature on the subject, a different picture emerges: powers are not separate, but interact with each other in an interlocking or interrelated manner; numerous functionaries of one power also belong to another power in personal union or exert a significant influence on another state power.

On closer examination, it must become clear that the mere existence of the state powers defined by Montesquieu and the reference to his theory does not automatically lead to the realisation of the Separation of these state powers. On the contrary, if we take a closer look at the political reality of some modern states, we can become disillusioned. Whether this linking and interaction of different powers even fulfils the claim of separation of powers and to what extent the reality of linking and interlocking is even necessary for the functioning of the complex processes of modern democratic states is the subject of occasional theoretical and academic debates, mostly ignored by the media, citizens and educational institutions.

Of course, any discussion of this should not neglect factors that are of considerable importance in state and society today, but which did not exist in the times of John Locke and Montesquieu. The main factors to be mentioned here are

• political parties,

• Media,

• supranational organisations (e.g. EU, UN, NATO),

• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs)

and diverse international interdependencies and dependencies.

All of these have an influence on the formation of opinion and also on the actions of state institutions. Looked at closely, these factors have an impact on the state of the rule of law. Their influence on the basic idea of the separation of powers and the stability of the rule of law cannot be regarded as favourable without further ado.

In addition, in almost all European states we have to deal with further, often country-specific peculiarities and with state organs or institutions that were not included by Locke and Montesquieu. What is important today and must be considered in the modern constitutions of democratically organised states in addition to the three powers of the state are:

the electorate or the citizens as sovereigns, secret services, public prosecutors.

In addition, for more than 200 years Growing importance of mediaInitially printed matter, i.e. pamphlets or regularly published newspapers, today largely telemedia (broadcasting) and the Internet with growing importance.

Compared to the 18th or early 19th century, universal and equal suffrage is a characteristic of modern Western state systems. Today, no class or property standards are applied to the right to vote or the weighting of individual votes. Although the electorate is not an organ of the state in the strict sense, as a constitutional sovereign, the citizens entitled to vote as voters theoretically play a key role in the modern state.

One can therefore conclude: The modern state structure with its multi-layered state organs and institutions as well as the development of the media have led to increasing complexity compared to the 18th century. However, the principles laid down by Montesquieu still apply to the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and must not be watered down beyond recognition. The argument that the situation today is not comparable with the past and that a separation of powers is therefore no longer feasible, out of date or even dispensable leads to dangerous representations.

Dangers for the rule of law today

It is a deceptive illusion to assume that firmly established and stable rule of law structures are fixed for all time in modern states. Constant vigilance on the part of citizens and reminders are necessary to ensure that the fine line between an acceptable state and despotism is not crossed and a fall is not imminent.

Manipulation and "opinion control" of the mostly uninformed and gullible majority pose great dangers. The naivety of the masses and skilfully generated and exploited irrationality can lead a society in the wrong direction.

If citizens and, above all, the members of state institutions themselves lack knowledge about the rule of law and the separation of powers and the desire to feel obliged to abide by them, there is a particular danger for a state. A modern state needs barriers against such a development. The essential barrier against disastrous developments should first and foremost be set by a pronounced division of state powers.

The following articles deal in detail with deficiencies in the separation of powers and the rule of law. Click here for part 2 and to Part 3.

Der Beitrag Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland am Scheideweg – Ohne Gewaltenteilung kein Rechtsstaat – Teil 1 erschien zuerst auf Advocatus Veritas.