IFFW online workshop: How can we help to reduce the dangerous global confrontation?

In my view, we as humanity will only escape a nuclear world war with luck and a great political effort. We should make this effort: The survival of humanity is at stake.

These reports of the past weeks show the danger:

In the waters off China, there are frequent near-misses between Western and Chinese ships. In the airspace in Eastern Europe on the border of the newly admitted countries to NATO and Russia, there are constant mutual rakings.

At a video summit between the governments of the USA and China, Biden warns of confrontation between the world powers.

Vladimir Putin warns NATO not to cross red lines in Ukraine in its arms deliveries and military support. NATO, in turn, warns Russia.

We like to suppress the fact that this is very dangerous for all of us. But we have the experience of the last century: two wars between great powers and global domination with over 80 million dead. In the Cold War era, several near-nuclear wars that we escaped only by luck.

What is there to suggest that a new war could be coming? These voices from the USA, or rather the Anglo-Saxon area, warn

Prof. Wolf from the USA sees as a background to the danger of war that the United States, which has dominated the world for many decades, for the first time has a real challenger in China, which is also the equal of the USA in terms of its basis, its economy. China will, if it remains peaceful, overtake the USA in economic power, some scholars assume that it has already overtaken the USA. But the economic base is also the basis for political influence in the world and also military strength. Every day today, the US is getting weaker relative to China, if the realist school of international relations is taken as a yardstick, which does not believe in cooperation between states but in an eternal struggle for supremacy.

Prof. Mearsheimer is a representative of the realist school. He argues that the USA will not allow China to overtake it in power. The USA would break all treaties if they were no longer advantageous to it, and it would not put up with that from any other power.

Prof. Allison has studied the great power conflicts of the last centuries: 16 times there has been a situation comparable to today's situation, that a rapidly emerging power threatens to overtake a previously dominant power: 12 times it has come to war. HE warns against war, but considers it likely.

For years, the British-Australian journalist, John Pilger, has been warning of a US war against China. The title of his film is: "The comming war on china". He concludes, given the encirclement of China with US military bases and allies, that it could amount to war unless people become aware of it and prevent it through active peacetime action.

Let us remember, next week is the anniversary of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Willy Brandt. With his policy of détente during the Cold War, he courageously opposed confrontational politics.

Are there possibilities for a détente initiative again today? What can we as individuals and what can peace initiatives contribute?

We will discuss this tonight at a networking workshop for a new policy of détente. However, in English, in order to promote international networking. Reiner Braun from the International Peace Bureau will present his ideas on this.