“Middle ground, moderation and peace” was written on the election posters of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD. But sometimes there is no middle ground. Because compromise means betraying your fundamental principles. The G7 states, whose leaders are meeting in southern Italy, are no longer the seven leading industrial nations following the rise of China and India. But they are the seven leading democracies in the world.
Among them are three states – Great Britain, the USA and France – in which the first modern democracies emerged as a result of rationalism and enlightenment. And three states – Germany, Italy and Japan – that were criminal dictatorships but then became free, peaceful and prosperous countries under the influence of the democratic trio.
The G7 is united by the fact that the law rules within them, not the law of the strongest, both in domestic and foreign policy. That they believe in progress and that free people can work together to change their societies for the better.
Russia, on the other hand, is a country that has degenerated into a criminal dictatorship. It cites nebulous historical reasons for waging a war of aggression against a neighboring country. It does not believe in rational, verifiable facts, but lies with a cynical laugh – for example, when it rants about Nazis and drug addicts in Kiev.
Many Germans are currently succumbing to the peace-mongering of the AfD and BSW – and that of the election campaigner Olaf Scholz. On Thursday in Bari, the foreign policy expert Scholz was seen again. He says things like: “Ukraine cannot negotiate with the gun to its temple.” The G-7 states made it clear that peace and negotiations are only possible when the gun is removed from the temple. They decided on new sanctions and Scholz stood firmly in line with his six counterparts. Not in the middle, but – this is also a quote from one of his better speeches on this war – on the “right side of history.”
