War in Ukraine: Conceiving the inconceivable?
Financing the production of weapons of mass destruction and the supply of heavy weapons must stop immediately!
by Marc Chesney*
((11 June 2022) Edit.) Marc Chesney is professor of finance at the University of Zurich. He has long urged major banks and other financial corporations to stop giving money to companies that produce nuclear and other heavy weapons but to help promote the good of our planet through sustainable credits.
The aggression led by the Russian army in Ukraine, and its consequences in terms of deaths, family separations and terrible sufferings, are unbearable and upsetting. While wars have been ongoing throughout the world since 1945, including in the former Yugoslavia more than 20 years ago, Europe seemed relatively unscathed. Now this continent, where two world wars began, is once again confronted with the spectre of war.
The nuclear threats made by Vladimir Putin concern us all. We are forced to conceive the inconceivable, and to speak the unspeakable: to conceive a nuclear war as possible, something every human being should excluded from the onset; a nuclear war that would lead to extinguish almost any form of life on earth. Yet still, the cry of horror that runs deep inside us and should make us reel, is hardly heard in the society. Taking these threats lightly is irresponsible. It is not about video games, but about the future of mankind.
How could we arrive at a point where a society is at the height of its productive and destructive capabilities and at the same time its members risk of being crushed by the very machine they themselves had been the functioning cogs of? A system that becomes predatory to an extent that it attacks life on a large scale? A system that is actually (dys) functioning, day after day? A system that is proud of its technologies, such as artificial intelligence, while at the same time both its tragic intellectual poverty and its murderous megalomania are shining.
What is the future of a “civilization” whose survival would be based on a balance of terror, intrinsically unstable? Inevitably, on an unstable balance, depending on the goodwill of a caste empowered to push a button (or several buttons) to put an end to it all?
Does hope suffice in this society to deter misjudgements and misunderstandings for all times? It is a misleading impression to place arsonists and warmongers only in Moscow. Warmongers and all kinds of gravediggers can be found in many countries. The producers of weapons of mass destruction are internationally recruiting numerous scientists to conduct their business dealings. They are financed by big banks who portray themselves as being sustainable and ethical. Cynicism knows no limits ...
NATO’s nuclear bombs are no less apocalyptic than Russia’s. A nuclear war would only bring about losers. Nationalist propaganda has already started on both sides of the burning curtain to mobilise the spectres and to prepare the population for future sacrifices. Everywhere, they are held hostage by increasingly extremist politicians who are promoting a logic of war instead of a logic of peace by increasingly employing heavy weapons.
Those who are about to be sacrificed in a democracy, e.g. the population, should decide on whether they want war or peace.
Strangely enough, this is not the case. Those who make the decisions will certainly have some huge fallout shelters at their disposal …
The writer Roger Martin du Gard wrote in his book Les Thibault about the First World War:
“Never before have those in power put reason in such heavy chains.” And “Never before has humanity been so profoundly humiliated, to suppress its intelligence without any restraints what so ever”.
Hordes of servile lackeys are trying to keep afloat a corrupt and moribund system that promotes lies in the name of truth, organises servitude in the name of freedom and who could force death upon us in the name of life.
In The Last Days of Mankind, published in 1918, Karl Kraus already alluded to “those years when operetta characters were playing the tragedy of mankind.” More than a century later, this sentence is still relevant. There is a great number of politicians who are overwhelmed by the events they have induced.
Today, it is not the enlightened who are predominant but those glorifying. Twenty years ago they have linked the end of history with the fall of the Berlin Wall and thereby deduced the final victory of the alleged market economy and the resulting peace.
Today, they are still wrecking havoc, claiming that international trade and globalisation of the economy are safeguarding peace. History proves the opposite. The First World War broke out when the economy faced its first globalisation. Since the end of the Cold War, free trade agreements have multiplied whereas global trade experienced a sharp increase, also in weapons and fear. True peace looks different.
As for the economic sanctions imposed on Russia and borne by the populations here as well as there, to what extent will they really weaken the regime? Why should they be more effective than those imposed on Iraq or Libya at the time? Obviously, these questions have hardly been raised by Western politicians.
It is criminal to sacrifice humanity on the altar of the nation and for interests that are not one’s own. The 200 million people who have lost their lives in the multiple wars since 1914 and their families demand accountability. Let us quote Karl Kraus again:
“Help me, you, the fallen! Help me, so that I do not have to live among men who, from their own ambition, have ordered hearts to stop beating, mothers to have white hair! If God is alive – this fate can only heal by a miracle! Come back! Ask them what they have done to you! What they did when you suffered because of them, before dying because of them! […]Corpses in arms, protagonists of the Habsburg death life, close ranks and haunt their sleep! Step forward! Step forward, dear confessor of the soul and claim your dear head from them! […] Step forward, to tell them that you don’t want to let yourself be used for this ever again!”
K. Kraus, The last days of mankind.
The complete text. New Haven and London 2015
In order to prevent the inconceivable from happening, to ensure that weapons of mass destruction are never used, the physicists and computer scientists who contribute to this development and their possible activation, must cease all types of activities in this field. This is their moral responsibility towards mankind.
The big financial institutions, among others those from Switzerland, who invest in the production of weapons of mass destruction must be identified at once and their criminal activities must be stopped. Furthermore, the supply of heavy weapons is irresponsible and extremely dangerous. It must be stopped immediately.
| * Marc Chesney, born in 1959, is Professor of Mathematical Finance at the University of Zurich. He takes a critical view of the financial markets and the big banks. He is the author of several articles on the dangers associated with the size and complexity of the financial sphere. Marc Chesney is a member of Finance Watch. He was a Research Fellow at the “Centre for Religion, Economics and Politics” (Collegium Helveticum) and is now a member of the Board of Trustees of the ZRWP. |
Source: https://marcchesney.com/site/assets/files/1277/article_ukraine_-_marc_chesney_-_01_04_2022.pdf
(Marc Chesney on his website: This article is intended to be circulated and translated.)
(Translation from French “Swiss Standpoint”)