“What we need is a new world domestic policy, a global system of policy creation. In first place, this means strengthening the United Nations. The contempt, which is present in the US and Germany, is totally inappropriate and expresses a lack of appreciation what the meaning of ‘democracy’ has to be today, too.” Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bartosch

„I feel understood by Ulrich Bartosch with respect to the core and details of my considerations. Due to the vital importance of this issue I wish for his exposition to be read and discussed. These thoughts need to be followed by practical consequences.”  Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker[1]
 
 
Being asked for the meaning of the term ‘Global Domestic Politics’ in between of all those important political approaches like ‘Global Marshall Plan, ‘Global Ethic’, ‘Global Governance’ and so on, I would say GDP points on the necessary guidelines for political thinking and practice in times of permanent lethal danger for mankind. Like a prism makes visible the different aspects of light in different colors, GDP differs the pragmatic political needs analytically and combines the different political goals programmatically.
 
The German physicist, peace researcher and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker coined the idea of GDP in 1963.[2] Then the East-West-Conflict, the so-called ‘Cold War’ was on its peak. The Cuba Crisis and the Berlin Wall taught the world that warfare between the superpowers Sovietunion and United States of America is probably on the agenda. This passage of arms would change the world in a nuclear battlefield.
 
C.F.v.Weizsäcker formulated a dictum based on a Realistic Idealism. He required the abolition of war. The world community has to build up a system of world peace, which is secured politically. Therefore International and Foreign Politics have to be changed smoothly into Global Domestic Politics. The requirement for a peaceful world was now and then a dream of political idealism. But it has now be added with the realistic insight, that the war between nations doesn’t make any sense, as long as the complete destruction of the human life conditions on this planet is on risk. But this risk will not vanish any more. It is a realistic scenario, which characterizes our future forever. People are not able or willing to react on problems, which will probably strike them in the future.

C.F.v. Weizsäcker clearly saw the need for a change of consciousness for our global domestic politics: peace, justice and the saving of creation. In presence we are facing a doubled fundamental danger for creation, since the technical progress in genetics makes huge impact in the being of mankind possible. The environmental crisis is accompanied by the threat of genetic technology. Also this risk will not vanish any more. This widens up our view on World Domestic Politics.[3]
 
All the military systems of security for C.F.v. Weizsäcker are just delivering us a pause for breath, which has to be used for the main task: politically secured world peace. They are not the solution by themselves. Today we learned the next lesson: the division of the world in east and west is gone. For many years the nuclear threat was identified with this antagonistic conflict, which now is history. But the nuclear threat remains. Many spectators were astonished, when the use of nuclear weapons came again into discussion after glasnost and perestroika. We had to recognize that there is a remaining nuclear deterrence between Pakistan and India. We don’t know about the really plans for nuclear arms in North Korea. We can’t calculate the risk of the ambitions of Iran. Further on there is the unimaginable danger of nuclear terrorism. Meanwhile the Unites States implemented a new nuclear posture. A fundamental shift took the nuclear weapons of different dimensions into the possibility of tactical use.
 
At the same time, the worldwide awareness has grown, that military options are not able to solve the given (and made) problems in the long run. International relations have to be dealt with internal perspectives, analog to domestic politics: for example the reform of UN and the International Criminal Court are pointing into that direction. More and more GDP are implicitly accepted as the needs of the moments. They fit to the needed policy like GMP and the needed polity like Global Ethic. GDP are taking care of the fundamental threats of mankind: complete destruction through weapons of mass destruction and the complete construction through gene technology, which we are facing. In this way GDP are taking care of the future conditions for politics at all.
 
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[1] Vorwort, in: Ulrich Bartosch,  Weltinnenpolitik – Zur Theorie des Friedens von Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Ducker&Humblot: Berlin 1995, S. 11-16 (11)
[2] Bedingungen des Friedens (1963), in: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Der bedrohte Frieden, Politische Aufsätze 1945 – 1981, Hanser: München, Wien 1981, S.125-137
[3] Ulrich Bartosch, Bewusstseinswandel und politisch gesicherter Weltfriede. Zur Aktualität einer politischen Idee.
In: Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Norbert Hintersteiner und Yoshiro Nakamura (Hrsg.), Philosophie, Gesellschaft und Bildung in Zeiten der Globalisierung, Rodopi: Amsterdam,New York 2005, S. 193-214

Source:
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bartosch 2007
Faculty for Soziale Arbeit of the Catholic University Eichstätt Ingolstadt