Berliner Zeitung Reports on ‘Groundbreaking German Proposal To Avert Ukraine War’

Sept. 24, 2023, (EIRNS)—The Berliner Zeitung of Sept. 19 reported (in German) on the Aug. 28 peace plan proposed by Professor Dr. Peter Brandt, Professor Dr. Hajo Funke, Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.) and Professor Dr. H. c. Horst Teltschik (see above report).

The proposal was released in the Swiss newspaper Zeitgeschehen im Fokus on Aug. 28 and details in depth how a UN-organized process could bring the Ukraine-Russia war to a close. The author of the Berliner Zeitung’s article is Michael von der Schulenburg, a former German diplomat at the UN and OSCE, and who had also addressed the April 15-16 Schiller Institute conference.

Von der Schulenburg writes that the proposal by the four “is arguably the most comprehensive and groundbreaking peace proposal made by any government, international organization or, as here, private parties since the war began 18 months ago.” Furthermore, it comes at an extremely important time, given the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the overall weakening of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At this point, “NATO could be faced with the decision in the next few months, and perhaps in the next few weeks, either to escalate the war against Russia again or to take the path of negotiations to go,” he writes.

Continuing the war would carry enormous risks, he continues, as it could increase the confrontation between NATO and Russia, and could “bring the world one step closer to nuclear war. So we can only hope that common sense prevails and NATO and Ukraine decide on a ceasefire with immediate peace negotiations.” Von der Schulenburg stresses that is why their proposal must urgently be circulated now.

He makes the case that “the European Union appears to have fallen into political paralysis. It neither has an obvious strategy of its own for the Ukraine war nor has it developed any ideas about what a peaceful Europe could look like after this war.” It is in the interest of Europeans to secure a peace, “because it will be the EU that loses in this war. It will be left with the costs of the war and the long-term costs of a destroyed, impoverished and depopulating Ukraine. Long after the U.S.A. has withdrawn across the Atlantic again, the EU will continue to be confronted with many of the world’s crisis regions in its immediate vicinity.”

The idea that Russia isolated is a pure delusion, concludes von der Schulenburg : “And you only have to read the signs from the BRICS-Plus summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and now also the G20 summit to correctly realize that it is not Russia that is isolated, but that it is the EU’s influence that is increasingly dwindling internationally.”

The new German peace proposal explicitly calls for the UN to play the main role in mediation, something which many will laugh off given the UN’s non-role recently. He goes on: “And yet this very suggestion could be of far-reaching, even global significance. It would lead to the rehabilitation of this world organization, which is so essential and central to maintaining world peace... Such a strengthening of the United Nations and the associated reaffirmation of the universality of the UN Charter will certainly be welcomed by the vast majority of member states. This German peace proposal could make a decisive contribution to this.”