THE term ‘state of siege’ is very personal to me. It is the title of a film about the Tupamaros guerrillas in Uruguay in the early 1970s directed by a brilliant Greek, artist, Costa Gavras. Introduced at a very early age to Marxist thoughts, I embraced Marxist philosophy and it shaped my anti-dictatorship perspectives.
I didn’t know about the anti-dictatorship films of Costa Gavras until a teenage friend of mine told me about Gavras. It was Balwant Persaud, currently a Guyanese immigration consultant who introduced me to a particular film of Gavras titled “Z” about the military overthrow of the Greek government.
It was brilliantly done so I moved on to other Gavras masterpieces. The one that moved me emotionally was ‘State of Siege’. I would say the films of Gavras had a profound ideological influence on me. When I read about the German government adumbration of a concept called ‘reason of state’ to justify the horrible and anti-civilization state of siege in Gaza, the thought occurred to me that the doctrine of ‘reason of state’, used by Niccolo Machiavelli, is being applied in international relations by the Germans to justify genocide.
The doctrine of ‘reason of state’ has been present for centuries in political theory. I never heard about its application in international relations until the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, used it to explain why Israel is special to Germany. Since the Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people started last October, the current Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has used it several times. Both he and Merkel have said that Israel is “German reason of state.”
In my opinion, this is a nonsensical application of the term to international relation that cannot be explained in academia. ‘Reason of state’ has been employed in political theory to argue that the existence of the state is paramount and thus state power should not be restrained by moral laws.
Use by the two German leaders in the context of German-Israel relation, makes no sense. The closest one can apply ‘reason of state’ to international relations is Bangladesh’s relation with India. The existence of the state of Bangladesh came into being through the war efforts of India to help East Pakistani secede from West Pakistan.
But even in this context, the term becomes a caricature. I doubt Bangladesh leaders would tell the world that India is Bangladeshi ‘reason of state’. It is almost impossible to understand how Israel can be the German ‘reason of state’. First, Germany played no part whatsoever in the creation and location of Israel.
Secondly, Israel’s existence was premised on the imperialist ambition of the UK, and France. It was France that assisted Israel in acquiring nuclear weapons. Thirdly, since the 1967 war with Israel and its Arab neighbours, prodigious military and development assistance from the US has kept Israel literally alive.
I cannot explain what Germany means by Israel being the German ‘reason of state’. Only the Germans can explain what they mean and when they do that then the concept of ‘reason of state’ becomes a justified demand by the Third World on Great Britain. Let us describe the German’s explanation.
German leaders said that Germany owes a special debt to the Jews because of genocidal violence against the Jews and thus there is a permanent obligation to see that the country that the Jews inherited is protected by Germany. They call this ‘German reason of state’.
But slavery was a more deadly form of genocide than the Holocaust. Slavery cannot be discussed in any comparative context. It stands out as the single most destructive act in the history of civilization. But Britain does not refer to the former slave colonies as British ‘reason of state’. If Germany can justify the application of the doctrine to Israel, then it equally applies to the British West Windies in relation to the UK.
Britain of course offers no special treatment to its former slave colonies as Germany does to citizens of Israel. Germany pays reparations to Israel. The UK government refuses to pay reparations to CARICOM states. The citizens of Israel do not need a visa for Germany. The descendants of many former slave colonies need a visa for the UK. It was only in 2023 that the UK abolished non-immigrant visas for Guyana.
In fact a horrible and tragic degradation of the descendants of West Indies slaves by the UK was the Windrush scandal in 2018. A large number of citizens of Caribbean ancestry who were born in the UK were rounded up and deported to the CARICOM countries; some of whom had their lives destroyed because they had no relatives back in the West Indies. That was ‘state of siege’ and a Machiavellian ‘reason of state’.
