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donate Summary for Blätter 04/2009
Hans-Peter Waldrich
School shootings
The bloody school massacre in Winnenden, Germany, confronts the shocked public again with the question about how such acts of violence come about. Publicist and pedagogue Hans-Peter Waldrich interprets school shootings as a primarily social phenomenon. According to him, the root causes rest with sociocultural and family problems, but also with the dominance of competition and separation within schools.
Andreas Buro and Martin Singe
Expansion and escalation
60 years NATO
In early April, NATO celebrates its sixtieth anniversary. Andreas Buro and Martin Singe, both longtime activists of the German peace movement, contrast the military alliance's shining self-portrayal with an alternative perspective on the history and presence of NATO. Their thesis: NATO was never a mere defensive alliance, but also – and especially – an instrument of capitalistic expansion.
Eric Chauvistré
"Forgotten" wars
The German Bundeswehr between disregard and overload
Does the renunciation of military operations abroad equal the retreat into international political isolation? For the journalist Eric Chauvistré, this question shows a wrong glorification of military power. Analysing the wars against Serbia and Afghanistan, Chauvistré shows that the deployment of German troops repeatedly failed – even in terms of the military's own standards. Still, military missions abroad are more an more becoming a replacement for politics.
Michael Paul and Oliver Thränert
START for an atomic zero?
As a result of the coming expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the United States and Russia will resume negotiations about nuclear disarmament in April. In view of the new political leadership, Michael Paul and Oliver Thränert, both senior fellows of the "German Institute for International and Security Affairs" (SWP) in Berlin, analyse Washington's as well as Moscow's interests – and see new opportunities for a significant reduction of atomic weapons.
Tamara Ehs und Gerd Valchars
Demos instead of ethnos
Plea for a European nation beyond the Homo Europaeus
Europe – e pluribus unum? Many people living in the European Union do not have any political rights. Austrian political scientists Tamara Ehs and Gerd Valchars criticise the assumption underlying this exclusion: that cultural homogenity is the precondition for the formation of a (European) nation. By demanding the inclusion of everybody, including migrants from non-EU countries, the authors outline an alternative approach to participation, citizenship, and "nation building".
Ulrich Brand
State-euphoria without strategy
The left in post-neoliberalism
The financial and economic crisis has unleashed an intense discussion about economic policies, the debate centring on the role of the state. Ulrich Brand, Professor for international politics at the University of Vienna, argues that an expansion of state intervention does not necessarily mean a change towards progressive politics. An emancipatory answer to the crisis thus faces the double task of radically questioning the existing power structure and proposing an alternative way of living.
Christoph Jünke
The crisis of left intellectuals
Leo Kofler's theory of "progressive elite" and the New Left
In the context of the debate on the "extra-parliamentary opposition" of the 1960s, the tradition of left socialism has again come into focus. Historian and journalist Christoph Jünke turns his attention to Germany's "first New Left" from the 1950s, in particular to Leo Kofler. Focusing on Kofler's theory of a "progressive elite", Jünke shows the up-to-dateness of his works.
Published 2009-03-30
Original in German
Contributed by Blätter
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