A few days after the Russian attack on Ukraine, a new report by the UN climate council IPCC was published, which makes it unmistakably clear: the earth is on the verge of tipping over into uncontrollable climate chaos if countermeasures are not taken very quickly. Half of the world’s population, the report says, is already at risk from the effects of climate change. That’s a good 3.5 billion people. UN Secretary-General Guterres chose clear words: “The report delivers a condemning verdict on the failure of climate policy. Refusal to act decisively is criminal. The biggest emitters on earth are guilty of setting fire to our one and only home.” The window of time in which we can still prevent the worst consequences is closing fast. But this message threatens to go largely unheard in the noise of war. It has far-reaching consequences – also for the question of how our governments should react to the Ukraine crisis.
The dual threat of climate collapse and nuclear war is reflected in the so-called Doomsday Clock published by the Journal of American Nuclear Scientists. The hands were already at 100 seconds before midnight before the Russian attack. A rational world domestic policy must therefore do everything possible to turn the clock back bit by bit and maneuver us out of the danger zone. And that means reducing the danger of an escalating war, even a nuclear world war simultaneously Slow down climate change and ecological devastation quickly. The answers to the Ukraine crisis must therefore be put to the double test.
The greatest push towards militarization in the Federal Republic
Chancellor Scholz has now announced an additional 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr and an increase in annual military spending to two percent of GDP – that would be the biggest militarization push in the history of the Federal Republic. While that seems understandable at first glance given the shocking Russian aggression, a second look raises some serious questions. First of all, the most obvious ones: does this money for armaments help the people of Ukraine? Will it shorten the war? The answer is: Most likely not, because a quick end to the fighting can only be achieved through negotiations. Will it make Europe and the world safer in the medium and long term? That is at least very questionable. History teaches that armor spirals tend to increase the likelihood of major wars. Example World War I. Before 1914 Great Britain, Germany and France engaged in an unprecedented competition of military destructive power. In the end, the regional crisis surrounding Serbia was enough to plunge Europe’s “sleepwalkers” into the greatest catastrophe in its history up to that point. The constellations of alliances dragged one nation after the other into the abyss. All the guns hadn’t made Europe any safer.
The presence of nuclear weapons adds a whole other dimension to this. A nuclear exchange of blows would not only make the regions of the northern hemisphere hit by the bombs uninhabitable, but would also destroy agriculture globally through the following nuclear winter and thereby virtually wipe out humanity.
The militarization push significantly affects the possibility of climate investments
Today one must also add the question why a NATO military budget of currently no less than 1.2 trillion dollars per year – that is 60 percent of global military spending – should not be enough to support Russia, which for its part only has a budget of 62 Billions of dollars to deter attacking NATO members. Does $1.5 Trillion Really Make Us Safer? Has the increase in spending in NATO by 25 percent from 2014 to 2021 and in Germany by as much as 40 percent brought more security and prevented the war in Ukraine? And what good are all the nuclear weapons if even their proponents don’t believe that deterrence really works?
Another fundamental question is what effect the additional hundreds of billions of dollars for the military will have in dealing with the second major threat to our survival, namely the climate catastrophe. Where will this money come from and who will end up missing it? The US economist Robert Pollin has presented the most comprehensive proposal to date for a Green New Deal, with which the approaching climate chaos could still be averted. It includes investments in the ecological conversion of 4.5 trillion dollars per year, which must be raised by the main perpetrators of the climate crisis. This corresponds to around 2.5 percent of global economic output. Other calculations, such as those by Jeffrey Sachs, arrive at similar orders of magnitude. The current burst of militarization significantly affects the possibility of these investments and therefore brings us closer to midnight. Instead of going into the general ecological restructuring, for which we only have a decade, the money is being put into the most climate-damaging of all economic sectors. The US military is already the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
We simply cannot afford to channel our resources into further militarization for a more than questionable gain in security. Instead of blind rearmament, other, more intelligent ways must be taken as an answer to the existential double crisis. As Bill McKibben, founder of climate movement 350.org, aptly observed, in response to Putin’s war, what we need is a major offensive in renewable energy and ecological transition to move away from the very oil and gas that feeds authoritarian governments around the world and fuels wars. Decentralized renewable energies also make us far less economically vulnerable than the current dependence on gas and oil.
With continued arms deliveries to the war zone, the western states are making themselves a party to the conflict
As far as the situation in Ukraine is concerned, in the short term it is a question of the EU and the federal government starting efforts to mediate a ceasefire, because that is the only thing that can help the Ukrainian people. However, this can only succeed if the Western states do not make themselves a party to the conflict by continuing to supply arms to the war zone. In the medium and long term, there is no way around developing a fundamentally new security architecture for Europe, with everyone involved, no matter how difficult that has become since the Russian war of aggression. The foreign policy legacy of Willy Brandt and even Helmut Kohl (“making peace with fewer and fewer weapons”) can still serve as a guide even in dark times like today. Brandt’s reasoning at the time was simple: the question isn’t what we think of the government in the Kremlin, whether we condone or condemn its actions. Even if we think that the incarnation of evil is sitting there, it is still a matter of ensuring our survival in the face of the danger of nuclear war and at the same time achieving concrete relief for people. It’s about more than just being right. It’s about a realism of survival.
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