Bomb tests for security
Bomb tests for security
Whenever in Bali, I buy The Jakarta Post to see what is
happening in the world. In these days of France's atomic tests I
found my own opinion reflected in your paper of Aug. 7, 1995,
under the headline France's "great power" argument cuts no ice
abroad.
France is a nation Germany never can be friends with, unless
one partner submits to the other. And this Germany is going to do
at the moment in order to stabilize the friendship. But can you
imagine a true friendship between two unequal partners? One who
has got atomic bombs and the other which lacks them? Only a poor
man can consider a rich man his friend, but does the rich think
so, too? I don't believe so.
In the course of European history, France and Germany were
strong enemies to each other. France wanted to destroy Germany
down to its bones at any time. Remember World War I, which ended
in the Versailles Treaty. France wanted to extinguish Germany by
demanding 132 milliard Goldmarks to be paid within 30 years.
Fortunately, this exploitation was stopped by the world economic
crises in the 1930s and the Lausanne conference two years later.
According to the Young Plan, Germany's now moderate payment
should have lasted until 1988, if Hitler hadn't stopped it
forever. And today France is going to get its Versailles payment
from Germany without any war, because the Bonn government wants
this unequal friendship by sacrificing its unique power, the DM.
Everybody considers this as a stupid idea, but what can the
German people do but applaud?
France's foreign minister said in The Jakarta Post: "We have
been invaded three times by Prussia and Germany and we want to
have security now. He had given this interview to an Australian
paper. Had he said this to any other paper in Europe, everybody
would have laughed, because France, concealing its "Napoleonic
arrogance", only wants to hide its true purpose, as I believe, to
force Germany in the long run, to help France's poor economy by
erasing the DM. In case Germany refuses to acknowledge the French
hegemony in Europe, it will use the instantaneously tested bombs,
I'm sure.
FRIEDHELM SCHWITTEK
Postfach, Germany