Hinweis: Ich schreibe auf Englisch, meiner Muttersprache, weil ich mich damit besser ausdrücken kann. Ich bin aber durchaus bereit, Antworten etc. auf Deutsch zu erhalten.
I’m wondering if I was the only one a bit perturbed be the LdN bit about the Munich Security Conference?
What should we, as citizens whose job it is to hold our elected leaders to account, hope to gain from the coverage of these sorts of conferences? What are we supposed to take away from their coverage? What questions are prompted by their coverage, and which ones should we be asking?
These are not rhetorical questions, but the questions I was left with after hearing the LdN report on the MSC (23. Feb. 2023).
I believe it was Ulf who asked the reporter which financial interests organize and pay for the conference. The reply was to quote, more or less, the ‚official wording‘ of the conference itself. To be frank, I could have gotten the official wording myself from the MSC website. So why am I hearing the „party line“ on LdN?
(Again, this is not a rhetorical question.)
In the block just prior, which centered on the possibility (or non-possibility) of peace talks, one particular line of argument from Ulf and Phillip was particularly convincing. It locates Russian Nationalist ideology as the necessary middle point for any analysis of the current situation, and describes/arrives at this ideology inductively. The argument goes that this ideology can be read out of the actions of the Putin regime over the last decade, and we should therefore expect it to be the guiding principle of the regime for the next decade as well. The expectation that this same ideology could produce new, lasting peace agreements is thus shown to be wishful thinking.
What, then, is the ideology of the ‚West?‘ Here LdN does not reason inductively, but deductively. The West stands for ‚freedom, peace, democracy etc.‘ The Biden party line. The West shares power and responsibility through a diverse network of public and private entities. The MSC party line. LdN does not always take up these party lines so simply (they point out that the USA has had multiple problematic wars over the last decades) but they also don’t read the West’s ideology out of the West’s actions over the last deades.
Now, It is reasonable to treat the West and Russia differently. We are within the West and not Russia. The West is largely, verifiably democratic and Russia is not. The west is therefore more likely to change. It is more responsive to the mind of its societies.
But to put it simply, I was a bit shocked at LdNs choice not to address the clear presence of the conflicts of interest/conflicts of values represented by the MSC. A quick bit of web surfing shows that the MSC is funded by among others:
UNIPER - through daughter company has opened and purchased multiple power plants in Russia
Palantir - US software/AI firm which developed the ‚killer app‘ for the Ukrainian Army
Goldman Sachs - US bank notable for its role in ‚Shock Therapy‘ in russia in the early 90s
Lockheed Martin, Rhein Metal, Renk, Leonardo etc. - weapons manufacturing
Dataminr - Twitter-affiliated US software firm notable for its work on surveillance technologies
Boston Consulting Group - US consulting firm who helped MBS consolidate power in Saudi Arabia.
Google, Amazon - no intro necessary
the list goes on…
There are clear conflicts of interest here, and along with them, comes a conflict of ideologies. This is normal in a democracy, but how should we talk about it? How should we report on it? We then heard about how in Munich this could mean more traffic and a smattering of protest on ‘both sides.’ Then we hear the journalist is paid by the event organizers themselves. I believe Ulf called it a real ‚meet and greet.‘
This is fine, but hardly up to the critical capacities of LdN. Who is meeting, who is greeting, what are they saying, and what have these companies and experts and politicians been doing over the last decade, the last two decades? What role did lockheed martin play in America’s illegal wars? What role has Goldman Sachs played in the stabilization (or lack there-of) of the former USSR? Why are so many American AI/Tech firms sponsoring a security conference in Munich? Which ideologies are at work here, and what can we expect of them based on their past actions?
My point is this: If the West is so serious about democracy, why are such important conversations taking place in closed-door conferences with inside-hire journalists funded by private capital and the weapons industry; conferences which are therefore at least partially outside of democratic control? Maybe there is a good answer to this, but from LdN i didn’t get it, and I don’t even hear the question posed. Just because Putin is a bloodthirsty maniac doesn’t mean the West should cease to be self-critical. Just the opposite.