[spectre] a terrible day

[Mathias Fuchs]

Dear Andreas,

thanks for your thoughtful reply to my quick email. You have a point 
there, of course, and I would like to draw back the "not innocent" notion.

When you ask about the "feminist and pacifist response", I can only 
offer a kind of politics that seems to have gone out of fashion: 
Neutrality. No weapons pointing towards any neighbouring borders, no 
membership in any military organisation.

The country that you know I come from made a decision in October 1955 to 
declare itself as a nation of  "immerwährender Neutralität" (eternal 
neutrality). Well, this everlasting condition did not last forever, but 
it at least the agreement kept the US and the USSR from stationing 
troops in Austria.

And once more: my full sympathies for the Ucranian people who has to 
suffer now.

Best

Mathias

On 25.02.22 10:13, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> Dear Mathias,
>
> I hesitate because this argument will change nothing, and more 
> knowledgeable people are making it more elegantly elsewhere, I hope. 
> But I want to shortly respond to your claim that "NATO is not 
> completely innocent of what is going on". From my point of view, this 
> is only true if you regard the Russian claims for its "security" as 
> legitimate and (I find it hard to imagine that you would condone this) 
> if you think that the specific current Russian "response" to the 
> "threat" posed by NATO is therefore in some way justifiable. (What 
> else, from an ethical point of view, could the phrase "not innocent" 
> mean?)
>
> Do you believe that, in order not to become co-responsible for the 
> current situation (what you call "not innocent"), when the Baltic 
> countries requested membership in NATO around 2000, the Western 
> alliance should have said, "no, sorry folks, we cannot do this out of 
> respect for the security concerns of the Russian Federation"?
>
> To the contrary, I would claim that, whatever the circumstances, the 
> Russian military attack on Ukraine, the threats and brutality towards 
> deposing the elected Ukrainian government, the quasi-annexation of the 
> eastern Ukrainian region (and of the Crimean peninsula, we should not 
> forget) are illegitimate, and the misery, death and destruction that 
> this war is bringing to people is unjustifiable and awful.
>
> However, what concerns me more than such weird "shares of guilt" 
> discussions is the question what a feminist and pacifist response or 
> attitude can be in the current situation.
>
> Best regards,
>
> -a
>
>
> Am 24.02.22 um 19:11 schrieb Mathias Fuchs:
>> Dear friends and neighbours,
>>
>> with all shared emotions about the horrible things that happen in the 
>> Ukraine and with particular sympathies for the victims of Russia's 
>> invasion, might I still put up a thought for discussion?
>>
>> I saw elderly ladies in the streets of Berlin today carrying signs 
>> saying "Fuck Putin". This is maybe understandable at a private level 
>> of anger, but it underanalysis what is going on there.
>>
>> Putin is not an individual devil who wants to destroy a nation. The 
>> actions taking are in my view a reaction to international politics 
>> that are a well coordinated maneuvres of Russian Intelligence, 
>> Russian Business and Russian Military. Not Putin as a person.
>>
>> The Capitalist West has expanded zones of monetary interest and of 
>> military influence towards the East since 1991. NATO countries are at 
>> the border of Russia. This is as if Russia would have installed 
>> missiles in Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. Do you remember the histeria 
>> when the Soviet Union set up missiles in Cuba?
>>
>>
>> I hope that this conflict will be solved without costs of life and 
>> the Ukrainian friends have my full sympathies, but we should not fool 
>> ourselves into "Putin did it". This is a much more complex issue and 
>> the NATO is not completely innocent of what is going on there.
>>
>> Do you remember that NATO is short for "North Atlantic Treaty 
>> Organization"? Is the Ukraine on the North Atlantic? Why does NATO 
>> want to expand to control the entire continent? Could you consider to 
>> be a Russian citizen and be frightened by a military organisation 
>> trying to take over the whole of Europe?
>>
>>
>> Thanks for your thoughts
>>
>> Mathias

-- 
Dr. habil. Mathias Fuchs
IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften
  Reichsratsstraße 17
  1010 Wien, Austria

Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM)
  Universitätsstr. 1
  21335 Lüneburg

Co-Editor Journal Digital Culture & Society
http://www.transcript-verlag.de/zeitschriften/digital-culture-und-society/


Residential Address: Kleistgasse 9, 1030 Wien, Austria
http://creativegames.org.uk/
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