„Worüber die Welt diskutiert - nur nicht in Deutschland“ | Ulrikes Panoptikum

Kyoto Symposium on Geopolitics

Ulrike Guérot reports on a three-day symposium in Kyoto featuring around 18 speakers from a range of countries and political traditions. She says participants shared an interest in peace and open debate, but did not form a uniform group.

Her central impression was that international discussions of geopolitics differ sharply from those in Germany, where she believes debate is narrower and less willing to entertain dissenting interpretations. She encourages viewers to watch the symposium talks on Pascal Lottaz’s Neutrality Studies channel.

Guérot says many participants described the war in Gaza as genocide and the war in Ukraine as a US proxy war. She contrasts these views with what she sees as the dominant German framing, presenting them as perspectives expressed at the conference rather than uncontested conclusions. She argues that the gap between these debates shows Germany is intellectually out of step with the wider world.

Presentations highlighted

• Evarist Bartolo, a former Maltese foreign minister, criticized the EU, NATO, and the OSCE, arguing that they serve US strategic interests. He also portrayed EU eastward expansion as divisive.
• David Gibbs discussed US efforts to maintain global hegemony, NATO’s role, and what he called the “Israelization” of American and European politics. He treated the Yugoslav wars as an important precedent for later interventions justified on humanitarian grounds, and argued that Europe failed to develop an independent response.
• Mattias Desmet applied his theory of “mass formation” to the Covid era and present-day hostility toward Russia. He linked susceptibility to mass fear with social isolation and the erosion of community under neoliberalism.
• Radhika Desai offered a Marxist analysis of capitalism and geopolitics. In Guérot’s account of her argument, China is socialist not because it lacks private wealth, but because the state directs capital and maintains control over key infrastructure. Guérot cites China’s transport systems and battery-swapping for electric cars as examples.
• Agoko Akpom, speaking from an African perspective, emphasized the long history of colonialism and exploitation. He challenged European and American participants to recognize that the “time of monsters” has long been experienced by colonized peoples, and described China’s infrastructure investment in Africa as comparatively helpful. Guérot connects his argument to the symposium’s broader discussion of capitalism and imperialism.
• Sheng Zhang, a Chinese doctoral researcher on China–Israel relations, presented a historical interpretation of US policy toward Israel and Taiwan, drawing on a Mao quotation. Guérot says his conclusions challenge positions commonly heard in Germany.

Recurring themes and conclusion

Guérot identifies several recurring themes at the symposium:

• The decline of the liberal order and the US-led world order
• The social consequences of neoliberalism
• The possibility of a multipolar order grounded in stronger civilizational identities

She argues that Germany and Europe should broaden their perspectives and re-engage with international intellectual debates.

Presenters and contributors mentioned

Ulrike Guérot (presenter); Evarist Bartolo; David Gibbs; Mattias Desmet; Radhika Desai; Agoko Akpom (name rendered inconsistently in the subtitles); Sheng Zhang; Pascal Lottaz; Nell Bonilla.