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In this issue
Exiting Kabul, taming Tehran
Already home: Dutch soldier on his last patrol in Afghanistan, July 2010.
On NATO’s Chicago Summit agenda: How to wind down the Afghan conflict and avoid war with Iran – By Theo Sommer
Two wars weigh on the minds of NATO’s heads of state and government as they prepare for the Alliance summit to be held in Chicago May 21-22. The first is Afghanistan, now into its eleventh year – America’s longest war ever and the European allies’ most protracted since the Thirty Years’ War in the early 17th century. Exactly when, how and on what basis should it be ended? The second is an armed conflict between Israel and Iran, likely to be precipitated by an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program. How and on what terms could such a catastrophic clash be averted?
Betting on a hungry world
Big investors are crowding into agriculture and land – By Wolfgang Mulke
It was a small but heartening victory for Foodwatch, a German consumer advocacy group, in its fight against speculation on agricultural commodities. In April, the Deka investment fund unit of Germany’s state-affiliated banks announced it was pulling out of the controversial segment. “We have decided to stop listing the price development of basic foodstuffs such as wheat, soy and livestock,” Deka’s statement said.
Earlier, Deutsche Bank likewise yielded to public pressure. Germany’s biggest bank said it would reevaluate its activities in the sensitive trade of food and refrain from opening any new funds that include agricultural investments during that time.
Are we eternal anti-Semites?
Germans have not forgotten the past, but some of them find dealing with it difficult: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin.
The debate over Günter Grass’ poem again lays bare Germans’ troubled relationship with Israel, Jews and their own history – By Peter H. Koepf
He wanted to remain silent no longer, he wrote, and that he was weary of the “West’s hypocrisy.” Germany, itself burdened by history, could not be permitted to become a “subcontractor for a crime.” Thus spoke Günter Grass. The nuclear arms power Israel threatens world peace and wants to exterminate the Iranian nation. Because Germany is to deliver another submarine to an Israel “specialized in directing all-obliterating warheads toward an area in which not a single atom bomb has been proven to exist,” the Nobel Literature laureate (The Tin Drum) felt compelled to say “what must be said.”