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http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/011habermas.htm
Happily solemn voices are absent from the German public sphere. No longing for fate, no intellectual drumming for the good comrade in arms. During the Gulf War the rhetoric of war, the conjuring up of state pathos, of dignity, of tragedy and of manly maturity was directed against a very powerful peace movement. There is little left now of either of these tendencies. Here and there a little malicious sneering about subdued pacifism or the tough slogan: "We are descending from moral heights." But not even these tones are compromising, because the supporters, as well as the opponents of the intervention are using a crystal-clear normative language.
The pacifist opponents highlight the moral difference between acting and non-acting, and point to the suffering of the civil victims, who have to pay the price of military force, even if it is executed with surgical precision. Their appeal, however, is not directed against the good conscience of hard-bitten realists proclaiming raison d’état, but against the legal pacifism of the red-green government. In line with the old democracies, who are influenced much more than we are by a rational natural law tradition, foreign secretary Fischer and defence secretary Scharping are relying on the idea of a domestication by means of human rights of state of nature between states.
This move puts onto the agenda the transformation of international law into a law for world citizens. Legal pacifism wants not just to restrict the latent state of war between sovereign states by means of international law, but also to replace it with a cosmopolitan order based on law. From Kant to Kelsen this tradition also existed in Germany. Today, however, it is for the first time being taken seriously by a German government. Direct membership in an association of world citizens would protect any state citizen against the arbitrary actions of their own governments. The most important consequence of an international law that even bypasses the sovereignty of states is, as can be seen already in the case of Pinochet, the personal liability of leaders and officials for the crimes committed during their state and war service. In Germany, the conviction pacifists on the one hand and the legal pacifists on the other dominate the public debate. Even the "realists" are hiding under the cloak of normative rhetoric. Naturally the statements - pro and con - reflect contrary motives. Those who think in terms of power politics, who mistrust the normative restraint of sovereign state power on principle, find themselves going hand in hand with the pacifists, while the "Atlanticists" - out of sheer faith in the alliance - suppress their anger against people who were not long ago publicly opposing the introduction of Pershing II rockets and against their new official state policy of enthusiasm for human rights. Dregger and Bahr stand alongside Stroebele, while Schäuble and Rühe stand next to Eppler. In short the left government, as well as the priority of normative arguments both help to explain not only the unusual constellation in the opinion-battle, but also the comforting fact that the public debate and mood are not different than in other Western European countries. No Sonderweg, no Sonderbewußtsein (special consciousness). Rather there are lines of disagreement emerging between continental Europeans and Anglo-Saxons, particularly between the ones who want to invite the UN General Secretary to their negotiations and who look for an agreement with Russia, and the hard-liners who trust only in the persuasive ability of their own weapons.
Naturally the United States and the member states of the European Union, who carry the burden of political responsibility, start from a unified position. After the collapse of the talks at Rambouillet the threatened military strikes against Yugoslavia are being carried out with the expressed intention of pushing through a liberal solution for the autonomy of Kosovo within Serbia. Within the framework of traditional international law this action would have counted as an interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, i.e. a violation of the principle of non-intervention. Under the premise of human rights policy, this intervention is now to be seen as an armed peace-creating mission, which is authorised by the association of nations (admittedly without a UN mandate). According to this Western interpretation the Kosovo war could turn into a leap from the classical conception of international law for sovereign states towards the cosmopolitan law of a world civil society. This development emerged with the foundation of the UN and was, after stagnation during the Cold War, accelerated by the Gulf War as well as other interventions. Humanitarian interventions since 1945, however, were always executed in the name of the UN and always depended on the formal agreement by the government in question (as long as there was a clearly identifiable and functioning state apparatus). During the Gulf War the Security Council established no flight zones over Iraqi territory and safe havens for Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq and thereby in fact interfered with the internal affairs of a sovereign state. This move, however, was not explicitly justified by reference to the protection of a minority from persecution by its own government. In Resolution 688 of April 1991 the UN justified its actions with reference to the right of intervention that was accorded to the UN "in cases of a threat to international security". Today the situation is a different one. NATO is acting without a mandate from the Security Council, but justifies its intervention as emergency aid to a persecuted ethnic (and religious) minority.
