Bl\u00e4tter <\/em>observes the eightieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an article by Hans Joas entitled \u2018Peace or Freedom?\u2019. In it the social philosopher discusses the ethical and political implications of the age of nuclear weapons through the prism of Karl Jaspers and G\u00fcnther Anders.<\/p>\n Both philosophers wrestled with the question of how to square the existence of the bomb with the age of universal human dignity as enshrined in the United Nations\u2019 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What, they asked, does such a guarantee mean in the shadow of global annihilation?<\/p>\n In his 1949 book The Origin and Goal of History<\/em>, Jaspers wrote that humanity was at an inflection point owing to the unique threat posed by atomic weapons: \u2018Either the entire human race will physically perish, or humanity will undergo a moral and political transformation\u2019. This transformation could have one of two outcomes: the \u2018nightmare\u2019 of \u2018global empire\u2019, which \u2018shapes the uniform masses through total planning and terror\u2019, or a rules-based \u2018global order\u2019, a sort of global federalism emerging out of \u2018joint decision-making\u2019.<\/p>\n The Manichaeanism of the Cold War was a natural fit for a thinker of such stark political dualities, Joas observes. Jaspers\u2019s fundamental contention that \u2018throughout history, all those who \u201cmade constructive history\u201d valued freedom more than life\u2019 meant that his book, ironically, \u2018must be read as a clear plea for the nuclear armament of the West\u2019.<\/p>\n G\u00fcnther Anders, in his book The Obsolescence of Man<\/em> (1956), agreed with Jaspers that the bomb had inaugurated a \u2018completely new situation\u2019, insofar as every morally serious individual had now to reckon with the existential dread the bomb conjured. Anders rejected, however, what he called Jaspers\u2019s \u2018two-hells axiom\u2019, i.e. that \u2018one must choose between the extinguishing of humanity and the extinguishing of freedom\u2019.<\/p>\n The corollary imperative of Jasper\u2019s preference, Anders recognized, was to support western military alliances such as NATO as a bulwark against the totalitarian threat. Anders accused Jaspers of maintaining a bogus \u2018aristocratic reserve\u2019 toward all forms of collective protest and held out hope in the form of \u2018actions of solidarity that, if undertaken by millions, would change the world\u2019.<\/p>\n In her article \u2018Ceasefire and repression: How the West abandoned the Iranian opposition\u2019, Katajun Amirpur criticizes Israel and its allies the US and Germany for leaving domestic opponents of the Iranian regime in the lurch during the recent Iran\u2013Israel war.<\/p>\n Prominent voices associated with the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement were killed in the Israeli bombardment, such as the popular young poet Parnia Abbassi<\/a>. Not only that: the war unleashed a wave of internal repression targeting ethnic and religious minorities \u2013 Kurds, Balochis, Baha\u2019is, and of course Jews \u2013 suspected of spying for Israel. In all, around nine hundred people were rounded up in the aftermath of the ceasefire.<\/p>\n The war is proof, writes Amirpur, of a failure of imagination on the part of Israel and its allies. The Israeli attack may not have had the anticipated rally-around-the-flag effect, but \u2018as much as people might hate their own government, they hate arrogant outside interference even more\u2019.<\/p>\n The Iranian novelist Amir Hassan Cheheltan even claimed<\/a> that, by attacking Iran, \u2018Israel has lost its only friend in the region\u2019. Many oppositional Iranians had felt a certain solidarity with Israel in the wake of 7 October, given that Hamas is a prime client of the hated regime of the ayatollahs.<\/p>\n Amirpur doesn\u2019t want to go that far and finds a shred of solace in the two nations\u2019 shared history. For all the tragic stupidity of the war, the ties that bind Iran and Israel are both too ancient (the 6th<\/sup> century BCE Persian king Cyrus the Great supposedly repatriated the Jews after the Babylonian Captivity) and too contemporary (there are now around 250,000 Israelis of Iranian descent) to be dissolved.<\/p>\n On the tenth anniversary of Germany\u2019s \u2018migration summer\u2019, during which then-chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country\u2019s borders to asylum seekers, Bernd Kasparek and Vassilis Tsianos take stock of the state of the EU asylum policy after a decade of populist, right-wing backlash.<\/p>\n The new German chancellor Friedrich Merz may have ridden to electoral victory on the back of promises to crack down on immigration, but according to the letter of EU law, his options are limited: Germany is beholden to the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and must honour \u2018the obligations arising from fundamental and human rights\u2019, one of which is the right to an asylum hearing.<\/p>\n Such constraints have led Merz and other conservative European heads of state, such as Italy\u2019s Georgia Meloni and the Netherlands\u2019 Dick Schoof, to search for \u2018innovative ideas\u2019. Kasparek and Tsianos focus on three such strategies.<\/p>\n The first is either to disregard international law or to distort it into irrelevance. Earlier this year, for example, nine EU member states \u2018called for a \u201cnew and open dialogue\u201d on the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights\u2019, claiming that \u2018what was once right may not be the answer for tomorrow\u2019. Less subtly, Merz\u2019s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has instructed border police simply to turn away asylum seekers, a clear contravention of CEAS\u2019s Dublin Regulation.<\/p>\n The second strategy is the so-called third-state solution, in which asylum seekers are offloaded onto non-EU states while awaiting the outcome of their application \u2013 ideally, then to be deported whence they came. Not only are such schemes legally dubious but \u2018they have proven to be impractical, unsustainable and, above all, expensive\u2019.<\/p>\n The third and, in the eyes of the authors, most dangerous strategy is \u2018migration instrumentalization\u2019: the attempt to frame refugees as having been foisted on the member state by a \u2018third country or hostile non-state actor\u2019. Perversely, refugees are classed as manipulated victims in order that they may be victimised a second time by being denied asylum.<\/p>\n But the chickens will come home to roost, warn Kasparek and Tsianos: \u2018The violation of fundamental constitutional norms \u2026 would cause profound damage to the rule of law and democracy in Europe.\u2019<\/p>\n Also to look out for:<\/strong> The text of a talk given by the Russian writer Sergei Lebedev at the Helsinki Debate on Europe<\/a> conference in May, in which he weighs the extent of the complicity of Russian society in the war on Ukraine and the role of imperialism in Russian history. The full-length English original is published in VoxEurop<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Mockup_Blaetter-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIran and Israel<\/h2>\n
\u2018Wir schaffen das\u2019<\/h2>\n