Immanuel Kant: “Peace is the masterpiece of reason.”
A quick look at current world events is enough to reveal that the world is further away from peace than ever. What humanity urgently needs now is common sense to secure peace, as we are living in an “in-between time” or, as we used to say, “between the years”: We are living in between two world orders.
The hegemony of the US, established after the Second World War, is now slowly dissolving, and the sphere of influence of the self-proclaimed “Western community of values” is being minimized. In the East, where the sun rises, and thus hope, new spheres of power and influence are rising too – the powerhouse Eurasia is awakening. More and more countries are wishing to join the BRICS alliance, which has long been a sleepy nexus, and thus, together with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the so-called developing and emerging countries are becoming increasingly attractive and powerful – economically, politically and geopolitically.
The future challenge in this multi-regional – and not a multipolar – world will be to respect all nations and their populations, their unique cultural nature and value. No matter what their political system, whether dictatorship, autocracy or democracy, all nations and their peoples should be treated in a way that does not diminish their dignity.
Since the term multipolar tends to imply opposing sides, the concept of a multi-regional world order stands for complementarity, which must be the guiding concept in the future. When the old departs and a new world order has not yet been established, the unstable “interim period” is unfortunately often associated with destruction, war and suffering. As it is now…
A NATO war in Europe
War is raging again in the middle of Europe. Who would have thought it would be reality again? Suddenly, NATO’s eastern flank is being rearmed and even expanded through the inclusion of new member states, as Finland and Sweden wait on NATO’s doorstep.
It’s déjà vu: Napoleon’s Russian campaign started on June 24, 1812, and ended with Russia’s victory on December 24, 1812. Then, on June 22, 1941 a second Russian campaign started with the invasion by the Wehrmacht of the Soviet Union, a campaign that also ended with the victory of the Soviet Union.
The result: only losers and immeasurable horror and suffering, millions dead and wounded on both sides. And a Europe in ruins. What awaits us now in 2023? End games. Will Russia launch an offensive?
Once again, the European continent would be a theater of war and the European nations the biggest losers.
Armed to the teeth
This current Ukraine-Russia conflict, a NATO war against Russia, is, like all wars, bringing only misery and suffering. Even now there will be no winners, only losers. With one exception: the global arms industry. As it is with all wars, it is neither about democracy nor human rights, but about power and gaining space and economic profit.
At $2,240 billion, global military spending reached a new high in 2022, up 3.7%. The US, China and Russia alone accounted for 56% of global military spending. On a year-on-year basis, military spending in Europe evinced the highest increase in more than 30 years,[1] with Finland up 36%, Lithuania up 27% and Poland up 11%, among others.
The next “powder keg” is in Asia and Oceania, where military spending totaled $575 billion. That is an increase of 45% in comparison with 2013, with China and Japan topping the rankings. China, with estimated expenditures of $292 billion in 2022, is the second largest military spender in the world. That’s a 4.1% increase over 2021 and even 63% more than in 2013.
The main supplier of arms to China is Russia. However, the largest increases in East Asia came from US allies: South Korea (+61%) and Japan (+171%). Australia, the largest arms importer in Oceania, increased its imports by 23%.[2]
Consequently, the global economy, especially the European economy, will continue to move in a downward spiral – as money is not invested in future industries to ensure prosperity, but in the arms industry.
Apparently, the US wants not only to weaken Russia, but also to finally disconnect the country from Europe economically and politically. The blowing up of the Nordstream 2 pipeline is thus highly symbolic.
By all means, the US is trying to further expand and strengthen its sphere of influence in the “Occident,” the West. The current US administration is not concerned with reshuffling the geopolitical cards, but with maintaining the old world order by retaining its spheres of influence, primarily in Germany and Western Europe, and by expanding its sphere of influence in Eurasia.
The European continent remains the big loser. Germany is prevented from developing into a free and sovereign country, within a free and sovereign Europe of nations, a Europe of fatherlands. For only as an “EU of technocrats” can the US’s geopolitical plaything remain under its tight control. And Europe remains the venue of future conflicts between the US, China, and Russia.
Coercive societies, centralism, and the fanaticism of equality
Centralism, like socialism and communism, and coercive societies, like today’s “EU of technocrats” and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), are based on one and the same principle, that of equality. This means all people and nations are equal and therefore all have the same needs, interests and values.
Yet the reality is different: People and nations are not the same. All people are different. Men and women have different character traits, such as courage, strength and weakness, but also curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, intellectual abilities. They have grown up in different social situations and have different cultural backgrounds that determine the course their lives take.
It is the same with nations and states: Different histories and cultures have produced different political systems and different historical developments and achievements.
Different geographies and climates determine different geopolitical strategies and interests. Some countries are rich in raw materials, some are not; the interests of coastal countries differ from those of their landlocked peers.
Hence, different geopolitical approaches exist: the German geopolitics of Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer, which highlights the interaction of the continental powers; Anglo-Saxon geopolitics, in turn, which focuses on the control of the world’s oceans, that is, on maritime supremacy. There is also the French geopolitics of Jacques Ancel, a more balanced approach that focuses on people who, through a common history, culture and language, come together naturally and voluntarily, respecting borders. This offers a non-rational nation-idea, une nation-idée,[3] based on the identity of the heart – a human approach.
Isn’t that what we need in life – more humanity?
It is essential to treat all nations and people in a non-judgmental way and to tolerate their individual characteristics.
Centralism and societies that coerce, whether economically or socially, have no future in the long run. Social structures that are strongly geared to one person, as is currently the case in China with Xi Jinping and in Russia with Vladimir Putin, will change and new liberal leaders will emerge. Personality cults and coercive societies will perish sooner or later; they will fail due to reality, because it goes against human nature to accept such systems permanently.
A state’s prosperity derives from a strong economy, which needs innovation and creativity, and which in turn needs freedom. Successful investments and developments cannot be determined from above, but arise due to people’s inventive spirit and the needs and requirements of the given time.
Possible approaches to a European central government, even a so-called world government, the first efforts of which may be seen in the creation of a worldwide pandemic treaty by the WHO, are doomed to failure from the start. They all will fail because of reality and life. Military command structures in all their forms will come to an end, because the future lies in identity, in nation states, in a Europe of nations and in international understanding.
Forced conformity
We are currently living at a time when, since the Ukraine war, arms deliveries, especially from Germany, are endorsed as being self-evident. Because, so the argument goes, “peace can only be secured with weapons.”
But anyone who believes that peace can be achieved through diplomacy, negotiations and common sense is defamed as a “Putin apologist” and ostracized from the public debate.
The press and media landscape have become a vociferous propaganda instrument and not only in Germany. All over the world, everything seems to have been “brought into line,” entirely in keeping with a fanaticism of equality.
Anyone who is proud to be a German, who consciously cherishes German culture, German history and German traditions is quickly condemned as a “Nazi” and excluded from public discourse. German, a beautiful, rich language that is not only loved worldwide but has produced great literature, is gradually being destroyed by forced political linguistic correctness and “gender neutrality” and is thus losing its soul and its essence. And again, all due to a fanaticism of equality.
Language is a powerful weapon of manipulation. It can destroy a people, a civilization – a fate that will soon befall the Germans. Our ancestors must be very sad, because in contrast to past wars, the Germans now seem to be destroying their own people, their culture and their history “from within” and apparently quite voluntarily – or not?
History and geography
Forgotten words, forgotten spaces and places. Who still uses the word Laubsäusel (the rustle of foliage), who still feels herzensleise (quiet-heartedly) and sees the hehre Glänzen (noble shine) in the Augenzelt (eyes) of the other – and is herzerglüht (aglow in the heart) and so affected as to remain wunderstill (miraculously still)?
When I hear the soft singsong of the East Prussian dialect, I am herzerglüht and become wunderstill.
It cannot be mentioned and remembered enough: 14 million refugees lost their homes in Germany after the Second World War, lost everything. Two million died as they fled during and after the war, and Germany lost a quarter of its territory. This makes it all the more important to become aware, again and again, of one’s own history and culture.
The German soul and German roots have been amputated and, with them, the country has been robbed of a large part of the its memory, its history and its culture. In 1945, about 45,000 orphans, so-called Wolfskinder (wolf’s children) passed through East Prussia. Their fathers were killed in the war, their mothers often raped and killed in front of them. They had to fend for themselves and were in constant fear, and starving. The Wolfskinder of East Prussia suffered immeasurably. But talking about this is still difficult today and often taboo.
Representing the wanton destruction of German culture, everything “Prussian” had to be condemned and banished. Nothing was to remind people of Germany’s true, historical East. The history of Germany has often been truncated, and the 12 years of Nazi dictatorship have been the perpetual focus at schools and universities in order to keep Germans in an endless loop of victimhood and guilt. Thus, many Germans still have no real feeling for or relation to their own country, their culture, their history.
The hidden power of geography and culture
Germans and Germany have always identified themselves through landscapes and tribes, the Bavarians, Prussians and Swabians, the people near the sea and the people of the mountains. Despite these apparent differences, these German tribes are connected by a spiritual and cultural awareness that is the root of the German nation. [4]
Quite the opposite of France, which unites and identifies itself through the republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity.
German unity must not only be accomplished externally, but also internally. Unfortunately, this has not happened, because the victorious powers deliberately prevented the two states from reuniting that remained of the German Reich. The point was always incorporation, a subordination of the allegedly backward East Germany into West Germany and, thus, into the much invoked and more advanced Western community.[5]
My grandparents would never have seen themselves as part of the Western community. They were Prussians and their gaze was always directed eastward. If anything, Germany was considered a “middle power” at the time due to its geographic location.
Likewise, the word “nation” largely fell into disuse, and new terms such as “East Germany” and “West Germany” were deployed instead. West Germany, closely associated with the victorious Western powers, now found its “salvation” in the Western community, including NATO and the EEC, the forerunner of the EU.
Truth always comes to light
We have been living in a multi-regional world for a long time, with different forms of government: democracies, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. According to a study by The Economist in 2021, only 45% of the world’s population lives in democratic structures.[6] The interactions within this new world order are still developing.
And it is precisely here that the European population, especially the German population, plays a supporting geopolitical role. Germany must free itself from the clutches of the psychological warfare to which it has been subjected and from the propaganda, must take its fate into its own hands once again and reflect on its geographical position in the center of Europe. This includes Germany’s withdrawal from NATO and consequently NATO’s dissolution. Furthermore, the “EU of the technocrats” must revert to a European economic community, the former EEC.
This will be a very long road and will involve many conflicts. But the journey has begun, as the sun rises in the East and sheds light on truth and on the rising powerhouse: Eurasia.
BRICS – the power alliance in Eurasia
The sun rises in the East … and so it seems on the world’s political stage. These natural geopolitical shifts are huge, and it is exciting to be there as they happen.
Russia is not as isolated as the Western community would like to think. The economic sanctions against Russia are not even observed by half of all the world’s states. Russia is the largest country in the world in terms of area, almost twice the size of Canada, which in turn is the second largest country in the world. And did the Western community really believe that if it stopped buying oil and gas from Russia, Russia would stop producing raw materials? The sources continue to gush and India, China and many other countries are happy to acquire these raw materials at a good price.
In the run-up to the 2023 BRICS summit, 19 countries wanted to join the alliance – 13 countries have submitted a formal application for membership and six an informal application. They include Argentina, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. The alliance is growing – today’s BRICS countries plus the potential members are becoming a veritable power bloc that will “command 50% of world oil production and 40% of world gas production.”[7]
The group is open and flexible and adapting to world political events by breaking away from the financial hegemony of the United States. To decouple itself from the dollar, the mbrigde project was launched. This international payment system is based on the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) under the auspices of the Chinese Central Bank.[8]
The downfall of Western arrogance
Like Germany’s historical East, including the territories of Prussia and Silesia, the world’s East, Asia, has often been seen as a backward region. Many Asian countries, like China, have only been good for serving as an “extended workbench.”
Everything has been measured against the “Western community of values” and evaluated and devalued with an unbearable arrogance – be it people, culture, or political and social systems.
Anything that does not meet the standards of the hegemonic US is considered inferior and dismissed.
The rise of Eurasia and the evolution of BRICS into BRICS+ show that not everything in the world revolves around the US and the attendant Western community of values. Piece by piece, the image of the US presidency is crumbling – the path to a new world order has begun and it will be unstoppable.
More and more alternative media are emerging, people are resisting forced conformity, new lifestyles are emerging and – sapere aude – Kant is experiencing a renaissance and, with that, Jacques Ancel’s French geopolitics.
We are all connected to each other.
Back to the roots
As mentioned earlier, Jacques Ancel, French geographer and geopolitician, proposed in his writings a geopolitical vision, a togetherness of “identity of the heart” and a “nation of the heart”: the idea of people uniting and forming a community based on a common history, language and culture.
A new world of communities without any judgements and devaluations, but tolerant of being different and thinking differently. And this tolerance can only arise when people again have “solid ground under their feet,” when they break away from forced artificial language and forced artificial societies, such as the EU, and re-establish the connection to their roots, without being deprived of the dignity of their identity due to condescending judgements.
No country, no nation and no human being is better and higher than the others – we are all different, contribute differently to the development of humanity, and are connected to each other.
In this sense, our own path must lead us back to the heart and reconnect us with the divine. We are all “people of the soul.”
It is necessary to let go of the old, to leave old thought structures, to leave the old world order behind so that space for the new can emerge. Worldwide shifts, old beliefs and claims to power will gradually dissolve. The future lies in international understanding and in identities.
A new world of dignity and love.
Identity of the Heart – Back to the Roots
References and reading tips
Ancel, Jacques (1938): Géographie des frontières, Gallimard.
Banik, Katja (2023): „ The starry heavens above me…”, www.katjabanik.com
Banik, Katja (2022): Im Rausch des Bernsteins – der historische Osten Deutschlands, www.katjabanik.com
Banik, Katja (2021): A clear view eastwards: Russia and Germany, www.katjabanik.com
Banik, Katja (2021): Without roots, no future. Decoupling ideologies, www.katjabanik.com
Banik, Katja/Lüdert, Jan (2020): Assessing Securization: China’s Belt and Road Initiative, E-International Relations, e-ir.info
Bode, Sabine (2009): Kriegsenkel. Die Erben der vergessenen Generation, Klett-Cotta.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1998): The Grand Chess Board, Basic Books.
Dohnanyi, Klaus (2022): Nationale Interessen, Siedler Verlag, München.
Graichen, Hesse (2012): Die Bernsteinstraße. Verborgene Handelswege zwischen Ostsee und Nil, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg.
Jähner, Harald (2022): Höhenrausch. Das kurze Leben zwischen den Kriegen. Rowohlt-Berlin.
Kossert, Andreas (2009): Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945, Pantheon Verlag.
Lasch, Otto (1959): So fiel Königsberg, Gräfe und Unzer Verlag.
Ledgers Insights (2023): The MBridge multi-CBDC for cross border payments is on a path to production
Preußische Allgemeine Zeit (PAZ) 31.3.2023: West-östliche Begriffsverwirrungen, Dr. Eberhard Straub.
Pölking, Hermann (2022): Das Memelland. Wo Deutschland einst zu Ende war, bre.bra. verlag, Berlin.
Sipri (2023): World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges
Sipri (2023): Surge in arms imports to Europe, while US dominance of the global arms trade increases
Teltschik, Horst (2019): Russisches Roulette: Vom kalten Krieg zum kalten Frieden, C. H. Beck.
The Economist (2022): https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy?fsrc=core-app-economist?utm_medium=social-
Wagener, Martin (2021): Der Kulturkampf um das deutsche Volk. Der Verfassungsschutz und die nationale Identität der Deutschen, Lau Verlag.
Weltwoche (2023): Weltmacht der Energieträger, Peter Hänseler.
[1] Sipri 2023: https://www.sipri.org/news/2023/world-military-expenditure-reaches-new-record-high-european-spending-surges-0
[2] Sipri 2023: https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/surge-arms-imports-europe-while-us-dominance-global-arms-trade-increases
[3] Ancel, Jacques (1938): Géographie des frontières.
[4] PAZ 2023: West-östliche Begriffsverwirrungen, p.3.
[5] PAZ 2023: West-östliche Begriffsverwirrungen, p.3.
[6] The Economist (2022): https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy?fsrc=core-app-economist?utm_medium=social-
[7] Weltwoche (2023): Weltmacht der Energieträger. https://weltwoche.ch/daily/weltmacht-der-energietraeger-weitere-19-nationen-wollen-dem-power-buendnis-brics-beitreten-der-westen-schweigt/
[8] https://www.ledgerinsights.com/mbridge-multi-cbdc-cross-border-payments/