“Why world peace depends on Germany”

Assessments by Hauke Ritz, publicist and philosopher, Berlin

by Marita Brune*

(12 September 2025) Attentive observers of world affairs have long wondered why European countries, especially Germany, not only fail to support Trump’s peace initiatives, but even seek to undermine them. This is particularly true of Germany, a country whose politicians have blindly followed everything that has been dictated by the US for decades. Has Germany suddenly discovered that it could act independently? It is impossible to ignore the fact that Europe is doing everything it can to prolong the terrible war in Ukraine. Is Europe, is Germany now possibly responsible for an escalation of this war, which could lead to a world war?

Hauke Ritz provides logical and comprehensible answers to these questions. Since the intensification of Western hostility towards Russia, the publicist and philosopher has been concerned with questions of foreign policy and peace research, particularly the East-West conflict. As early as 2023, he wrote an essay entitled “Why world peace depends on Germany.”¹ He has now updated his ideas in an interview with Walter von Rossum.² Below, we document his most important theses.

Hauke Ritz already noted a looming confrontation with Russia in 2007, when Putin gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference. “At that point, it became clear to me that we were heading for a war between the US and Russia [...]. It was evident that preparations for war were already underway, not only the deployment of the missile shield, but also the demonisation of the enemy. As early as 2007 [...] attempts were made to dehumanise Russia, to develop a false, clichéd, distorted image of the country.”

Proxy war in Ukraine – and why it is difficult to find an end

In 2022, war finally broke out. According to Ritz’s assessment, the US is using Ukraine as a proxy to weaken its “archenemy” Russia.³ Now it is apparently difficult to reach a peace agreement.

Ritz: “Neither the US nor Russia can compromise; they cannot back down. For the US, withdrawing from the war in Ukraine would mean losing face. Its authority would be at stake, the purpose of NATO would be called into question, and de-dollarisation would accelerate. They can only continue to fight, investing even more energy in the conflict in Ukraine. The same applies to Russia, which would face an insoluble security problem if Ukraine were to become a NATO member right on its border, with American weapons and missile systems 450 or 500 kilometres from Moscow. In that case, Russia would have to move its capital to Siberia or the Far East and would probably also be eliminated as a geopolitical player.”

If Germany “refuses to participate in this war, then it will end.”

And what does Europe, what does Germany have to do with this? Hauke Ritz: “If it is the case that neither side can back down, then everything depends on Europe, and in Europe, Germany is the strongest economic power. We are at the centre; we are the hub of the entire logistics network. Without us, the whole Ukraine conflict is unmanageable. If we say no, if we follow in the tradition of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr or the German peace movement of the 1980s and refuse to go to war, then it will end and it will also be diplomatically resolvable.”

Why the US now favours a diplomatic solution …

The US position has changed since Trump. Ritz explains: “The US naturally benefited from the change in its foreign policy when it had a change of government with a markedly different personality as president. That gave them the opportunity to make a correction. The US is naturally afraid that this war will end in a loss of face for them. And when Trump now says, ‘This is not my war; under my administration, this war would never have started,’ it gives the US the opportunity to withdraw from the war without losing face.”

... and Europe a continuation of the war

“We in Europe do not really have sovereignty. That means that all European countries, especially the important European countries, are more or less governed by a transatlantic political class; one could also say that it is a government of American agents of influence. Their qualification is to always follow the US as it has been up to now; they have learned nothing else. And now, for the first time in 70 or 80 years, the US is telling Europeans: finally stand on your own two feet, be independent, as the Trump administration and especially Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference. But the elites are cognitively and intellectually unable to deal with this, given their upbringing. They have not learned to orient themselves independently in the world; they have been selected for the political process based on completely different qualifications and not on their ability to orient themselves in world history.”

There is a lack of politicians of the calibre of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr

“That’s why they can do nothing but simply intensify the line that has been pursued in recent decades and insist that Russia must be ‘defeated’ or – as leading politicians have already said – ‘ruined,’ or at least weakened as a geopolitical actor. They are sticking to this line for lack of alternatives. Even in the current political system, there is no politician who could embody a policy of peace and détente modelled on Willy Brandt or Egon Bahr.”

Fear that failure will be brought into the spotlight

“At the same time, these politicians are afraid that if a turnaround does occur, their own political failure could be brought into the spotlight, because this political class has succeeded not in eliminating Russia as a political player, but ultimately in eliminating Europe as a geopolitical player. Europe, as it is currently positioned, will not become an independent player in the multipolar world; we are suffering massive economic disadvantages due to the interruption of trade with Russia. We have alienated ourselves not only from Russia, but from the entire BRICS world. We have become a laughingstock in international relations. To prevent this fundamental failure of not only the Scholz administration, but also the Merkel administration and European governments of the last 10 to 15 years from coming to light, attempts are being made to stick to the previous policy.”

Hoping for a change in policy in the US

In doing so, European politicians only appear to be at odds with the American administration: “These European elites, who, as I said, are transatlanticists and have ties to the deep state in the US, now want to lie low, as they did during Trump’s first term, and hope that Trump’s political push will peter out, discredit itself, and that at some point the deep state, the influential forces that previously ruled the administration, will be back in office. That is their goal: to hold out.”

Ritz then addresses the increasing restriction of democratic and political freedoms in Germany, which goes as far as the quasi-exclusion of one of the most popular parties in the polls, as well as the increasing willingness in foreign policy to supply Ukraine with weapons, which could lead to a total escalation of the war.

“We are moving toward a massive escalation in both domestic and foreign policy.”

Europe and Germany are trying to halt a global trend

Ritz finally broadens his view and explains that Europe and Germany are trying to halt global developments:

“There is a prevailing global trend toward a new conservative understanding of politics, against an economic model of endless globalisation, also featuring some new social elements. That is what people all over the world want. This can also be seen in the election results in various countries. Linked to this is the trend of the BRICS countries consolidating, with ever more countries wanting to join them. In other words, the transition to a multipolar world that is no longer dominated by a single economic model. What is now being attempted is to suppress and derail this global trend and to cling to the old ways by force.

But if history is any guide, this has never actually worked. Remember the last days of the socialist alliance, when Gorbachev had already initiated a change in the Soviet Union, but Honecker stubbornly stuck to his course. There was also brief consideration of whether to apply the Chinese model, i.e., whether to shoot at the demonstrators, as happened in China’s Tiananmen Square. That did not happen [...]. So, I think that in the long term it is not possible to act against a global historical trend. But that is what is being attempted now, and that is of course alarming.”

As early as 2023, Ritz stated: “Whether the great war will be fought with the use of nuclear weapons will not be decided in Washington or Moscow, but in Berlin.”⁴ It looks as though he was right.

* Marita Brune is a member of the editor’s office of “Swiss Standpoint”.

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 Hauke Ritz, Essay in Nachdenkseiten.de, 17 February 2023

2 Interview: Walter von Rossum with Hauke Ritz, Manova.news, May 2025. All quotations below are taken from this interview, unless otherwise indicated.

3 Hauke Ritz, Warum der Weltfrieden von Deutschland abhängt, Neu-Isenburg 2025, P. 206

4 ibid.