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donate Summary of Merkur 6/2008
The June issue (Number 709) deals with war. Victor Davis Hanson cleans up the legend that American military history is defined by its technical and strategic superiority. The reality of war – of every war – is always also defined by failure and incompetence. Thomas Speckmann draws the conclusion from the Iraq disaster that offence is in no way the best defence and that the West should strengthen its defence.
The issue opens with an essay by Jerry Z. Muller, who unfolds the highly uncomfortable thesis that the times of ethnic nationalism have in no way passed – and that isn't the case only in Africa and the Third World but also in Europe!
Carlos Widmann addresses a history of the allied occupation of Germany; Geoffrey Wheatcroft's review praises Europe's demilitarization after 1945; Dustin Dehéz provides good reasons to expand Nato; Andreas Krüger informs us about the American lessons from the Iraq war; and Hannes Stein describes the irony – you could almost say cynicism – of the story that Barack Obama is a member of the Democratic Party.
Friedrich Pohlmann examines the results of feminist politics in the last decades and comes to the conclusion that it was in Germany, in any case, a bit too successful. Thomas E. Schmidt explains Germany's leftward slide and the populist tactics of Lafontaine's followers. And finally the columns: Uwe Jean Heuser informs us about the most recent developments in economics (the discovery of mankind!), and in his first aesthetic column Wolfgang Ullrich brilliantly leads us through a reflection on shower gel design.
Published 2008-06-16
Original in German
© Merkur
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