Former Czech Foreign Minister Karl Schwarzenberg has slammed the current approach in modern world politics in an interview with the newspaper Basler Zeitung, suggesting that the pre-negotiated rules should take precedence over ill-defined values, not vice versa.
"Everybody is talking about 'values' that they are pretending to defend. But this is exactly what is destroying the framework of rules that was created following the Second World War to maintain peace. That's why I can't hear the word ‘values' anymore. That's enough — lick my ass with your values!" Schwarzenberg said.
He added that people often pretend to "do something for the sake of values," but in reality, they "betray them."
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Schwarzenberg is confident that people need to follow the rules that were worked out after the Second World War and that when these rules are sacrificed for the sake of values, "tragedy won't be long in coming." He brought up Syria as an example of a country that has been "bombed without [a] declaration of war" under pretext of protecting "values."