Dear friends of peace,
the Munich Security Conference (MSC) publishes well-founded publications to present the military-based foreign and security policy of the NATO states. Conference Director Christoph Heusgen pointed out to us in our last conversation the recent publication “Standard Deviation,” which deals with double standards and double morals of the “West.” And that in an astonishingly critical way for the MSC, even if the violations of the values of the UN Charter are not named with sufficient specificity.
The publication “But NATO – 10 popular myths about Putin’s war against Ukraine” is quite different, both in terms of presentation and content. It is probably intended to be a kind of polemic against the myths and conspiracy theories of extremists and populists, who bring these up in “the emotionally charged discussions.” According to the authors, politics and the public are “not yet practiced in dealing with war,” hence the “Zeitenwende on tour” campaign, for whose accompaniment this publication was written.
To ensure that this practice in dealing with war is as effective as possible, the publication uses a clear black-and-white representation: Each of the 10 myth claims is dualistically opposed to what is correct. One and a half pages of clarification with assertions and also emotional statements are sufficient for this, all with little and questionable reference to sources (e.g. newspaper articles). It seems that it is that simple!
The fact that a war always has extremely complex backgrounds, a conflict genesis that is often not even historically worked through, and that a schematic friend-enemy scheme is unsuitable without considering multi-layered influencing factors and different actors, seems actually trivial. Especially in a conflict that is related to the constellation of nuclear world powers. The meanwhile dominant “Zeitenwende narrative,” constantly repeated by Western politics and the media, therefore by no means represents the irrefutable truth and can equally be regarded as a myth.
At the MSC, an in-depth discussion of these connections, fact-based and with rational argumentation and with the inclusion of different points of view, would have to be conducted in order to counter the myths of any provenance.
What do you think? Do you think such a discussion makes sense? We look forward to hearing your opinion!
With peaceful greetings
Erwin Schelbert