Since the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine, it has become a certainty that Western policy since the fall of the wall has been based on false assumptions.
The belief in the exportability of democracy neglected the obstinacy of cultures and traditions in which individual freedom is not held in high esteem and no civil society has developed on which democracy could be built.
From the Arab Spring to Afghanistan to Mali, the picture was always the same: the democratic awakening was shattered by local traditions, be it the tribal societies in Afghanistan that are remote from the state or the widely accepted political nepotism in Mali.
Military interventions like in Iraq left a broken field and a breeding ground for autocratic regimes and jihadism.
Thomas Thiel
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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For the ethnologist and Islam researcher Susanne Schröter, the political failure is a result of hubris and self-hatred.
Other countries and regions were imagined in their own image as schoolchildren who, in principle, shared the same values and could be persuaded through dialogue and trade to finally put them into practice politically.
At the same time, these values were disavowed internally through an identity politics that, in grandiose one-sidedness and on the thinnest empirical basis, paints a distorted picture of the West, which is held responsible for all the evils in this world.
It is an irony of history that now, of all people, a party that is deeply entangled in this aberration has to bring about the change in realpolitik.
In her concise recapitulation of the Ukraine war, Schröter paints a devastating picture, particularly of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who still showed solidarity with the Russian President when his destructive ambitions were obvious.
Russian President Putin was placed under puppy protection and given him the energy policy weapon with which he is now driving Europe into the dependence of other autocracies.
Schröter does not conceal the broad party-political and intellectual flank protection that Steinmeier could rely on.
The Transfiguration of the Other in Identity Politics
She does not believe in the proclaimed turning point.
On the contrary: internally, the evils that are being fought with foreign policy continue to be nurtured.
The highlight of Schröter's sweeping arc lies in the consistency with which she relates geopolitical events to intellectual currents and their domestic political reflexes, and from this brings out the contradictions that are responsible for the failure.
For them, the overarching contradiction lies in the fact that the West measures itself against standards of justice that it spares others.
Schröter does not ignore the fact that he often does not live up to these standards and morally disguises interest-based politics.
Nevertheless, the picture is crooked: Anyone who accuses Western imperialism should not remain silent about Russian or Chinese imperialism.