druckversion In a changing world

Last year the Bundestag sanctioned more risky Bundeswehr missions than ever before. The Chancellors' call for "unlimited solidarity" with the United States and the government's support for the US operation Enduring Freedom aroused deep fears that the Federal Republic was getting involved in an American-Afghan military adventure. "Stern" and "Die Woche" spoke of a new "military Germany" embarking on a Red-Green "war course" and cherishing "dodgy superpower dreams".

The fact that all this happened with the support of the Alliance/Greens and that the decision was linked with Schröder's insistence on a vote of confidence strengthened the impression among the general public and loyal Green supporters that the Greens were abandoning their principles in order to hold onto power. They are asking what the Greens still stand for and what else they will be prepared to go along with. According to the latest polls, Green credibility is very low, contrasting sharply with Joschka Fischer's unflagging popularity.

It is true that the Green approach to military issues has been changing very quickly, and although the picture of a party betraying its principles, putting power before morals, easily catches on, it is nonetheless a crass distortion of genuine Green positions and policies.

That impression ignores the fact that to most Green members of parliament and conference delegates the recent decisions on the deployment of Bundeswehr forces were not simply a question of being for or against pacifism but a complex issue requiring them to weigh up how far the use of military power to remove the threat of terrorism, something hitherto considered not possible, was legitimate, necessary and justifiable.

It also ignored the reorientation process which growing numbers of Greens, supporters of the peace movement and citizens went through in the nineties, especially in the context of the Balkan wars, and which induced them, even when the Greens were still in opposition, to alter their position on the (SFOR) military operation in Bosnia. Upon joining the government the Greens found themselves involved in matters (coalition agreement, Nato membership, responsibility for the Bundeswehr, the constraints of multilateral foreign policy requiring compromise solutions) which had not previously received adequate consideration in the context of a party programme and therefore had not been fully explained, Party expectations had been too high and this heightened the disappointment.

This painful experience has changed the Green resolutions on peace and security adopted at the delegates conference held in Münster in 2000 and is reflected in the new draft policy programme. However, this belated change of position apparently went unheeded by many regular Green supporters, the rest of the peace movement, and the general public. To them the traditional image of the Greens as a protest party supporting the peace movement remained unchanged, with the result that hardly any attempt was made to grasp its role in the making of national policy, as a party having to meet the demands of participation in a coalition government.

They made too little of the opportunity arising in the process of absorbing the Kosovo shock to organise political learning processes and regain some of the lost confidence. The resolution adopted with a large majority at the Rostock conference cannot conceal the lack of clarity and uniformity in the alternative Green position on war, the use of military force, non-violence, peace and security policy as the party, in Fischer's large shadow, plays its part in the ruling coalition. The cumulative disappointments of Kosovo, the nuclear compromise and the decision on Afghanistan, have caused a much greater alienation among the Greens than is apparent from the numbers leaving the party. It would be both a sign of ignorance and foolish to simply to write off the many disappointed people.

We cannot even allow ourselves to quickly dismiss such painful questions from our thoughts as we did after the debate on Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, for they will catch us up again at the latest when the United States extends its anti-terror war to Iraq. It is unlikely that anyone will win an election because foreign policy issues, but they could very well lose one.

In view of this loss of credibility and the upcoming elections, there is a vital political need to clarify these key issues. This cannot done by reverting to pre-1998 positions or by severing peace-oriented Green roots. There must be a visible and credible extension of Green competence in the cause of peace – in the light of fundamental Green values, new challenges in the context of peace and security policy, and in the framework of government responsibility and multilateral policies.

War is and remains the worst violation of human rights, human dignity and the right to life. War is the scourge of mankind. Precisely because war now appears conductable again, it's ghastly reality must not be forgotten. More than any other party, the Greens sought responsible answers, to the Balkan wars, to expulsion and genocide, and soon began to pursue civil solutions. When the majority supported Nato's air attacks on the Milosevic regime, the Greens by no means turned into advocates of war. They are and will remain a party fostering peace and the defence of human rights. Direct prevention of war and the elimination over time of war as a political institution in favour of a world domestic policy must be the central objective of any peace policy. Conscientious objection is a human right and should be respected by all states.

In the eighties, the Greens' first decade, we were still mainly concerned with a world laden with violence, as manifest in the madness of the nuclear arms race. War in Europe would have meant self-destruction. War was not conductable. The East-West confrontation also influenced the many proxy wars in the Third World. But in the nineties, although the confrontation was over and in spite of considerable progress in the field of conventional and nuclear disarmament, nations continued to build up their arsenals. The aspirations of yet more countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction (including banned B and C weapons) and delivery systems is a constant threat to international security.

At the same time, the basic pattern of war changed. Freed from the shackles of the East-West confrontation, society in many regions became increasingly violent. In the meantime, domestic and regionalised conflicts and wars – in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in Central and South-East Asia, in Western, Central and North-East Africa, etc. predominate. Open warfare alternates with conditions of "fragile peace" (Tobias Debiel).

These "New Wars" (Mary Kaldor) involving denationalised and privatised warfare are quite different in terms of participants, objectives, management and financing from the former "wars of liberation" and traditional international wars. They are accompanied by a disintegration of statehood and in many cases exacerbated by ethnocentric policies aimed at establishing national identities. They proliferate on the basis of a specific wartime economy and are closely interwoven with organised crime (trafficking in arms, drugs, humans and diamonds). Their prime objective is the civilian population and their pattern is very similar to that of the Thirty Years' War. (Herfried Münkler).

Most "new wars" outside Europe have so far largely gone unnoticed. They didn't seem to affect us. But the boundless activities of transnational terrorist networks have shown this to be an illusion. Such wars also pose a direct threat to the islands of peace in Western Europe, and privatised violence undermines international security and world peace. The "peaceless domains" of the new wars long ago became centres for the export of violence, terror and crime.

With our slogan "Just imagine, there's a war on and no one's going" we launched the peace movement in the 80s condemning the arms race and the risk of war between the military blocs, our aim being to prevent it. In view of the changing paradigms of warlike conflict and real wars, just to say "Count me out!" is no longer enough. That was the attitude which governments adopted towards the impending civil war in Rwanda in 1994 and other conflicts, with devastating consequences. On 11 September terrorist attacks of warlike intensity struck at the very centre of the world's most powerful nation. There is a real danger of such attacks being repeated and even escalated through the deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

Whereas the "new wars" rage mainly on the ground, the high-tech warfare conducted by industrialised countries relies first and foremost on air forces. Through its experience in the Gulf War, the war in the air over Kosovo, as well as the "anti-terror war", the United States is acquiring a dominating capacity for long-distance intervention so that it suffers very few casualties itself. This increases the tendency towards another kind of privatisation of military means to maintain security, that of a powerful nation vis-à-vis international law (of war) and collective security.

What is required is an active anti-war policy within the framework of rules adopted and implemented by organisations created for the purpose of collective security, first and foremost the United Nations. That policy should cover

- institutionalised means of long-term crisis prevention, that is to say, eliminating

- protection of one's own and international security by precluding the threat of war

In this context direct measures to remove dangers and causes are inseparable. Trying to stop violence without removing the causes is like flailing at windmills. On the other hand, tackling the causes, which is a task often neglected, should be no excuse for not considering what must, can and should be done with the means available to avoid an immediate threat. The PDS, for instance, systematically evades this crucial issue of political responsibility in Bundestag debates on the deployment of the Bundeswehr.

There remain insoluble dilemmas: an active anti-war policy in defence of our collective security and pursuant to the Charter of the United Nations justifies a limited military response to armed conflict in individual cases. To reject the use of force as a matter of principle could, in extreme cases, give an aggressor free rein.

Green fundamental values include the non-use of force. The majority saw this in the anti-militaristic sense, only a minority in absolute terms as the complete absence of force.

The total and unconditional absence of force, which is generally equated with pacifism, is easily justifiable, entirely legitimate, and can be practised in exemplary fashion by individuals or groups. They warn us constantly about playing down violence and its spiralling effect, about the stupidity of "violent" solutions, and about the costs in term of human life and material. To that extent they are often far more realistic than ideologists who advocate "military" solutions. They help educate the general public as regards the non-violent approach to conflict and continue to play an important role in that they constantly query and seek to prevent the use of force.

On no account does the total absence of force equate with looking away, doing nothing or being defenceless. It is rather a continuous search for a way out of conflict and for alternative solutions. There are many examples both past and present where not only courageous but also effective resistance has been offered without the use of force. The possibilities for such active and constructive pacifism are too little known, the potential means largely untapped. This pacifism has not ended, indeed the need for it is greater than ever.

But for a party in government, also when it is in opposition demanding better government, unconditional pacifism is not altogether practicable. In fulfilling their responsibility towards the community, the foremost duty of parliament and government is to protect the people from any threat of force both at home and abroad, and to help maintain international security and world peace. The binding framework for the performance of this duty is international law, which allows two exceptions from the international prohibition of force. One applies in the case of individual and collective self-defence, the other where international security and world peace are in jeopardy and this has been confirmed by the UN Security Council. A third instance is beginning to emerge in the form of crimes against humanity and genocide, in which case the ban on force and intervention can be set aside. Under its constitution, the Basic Law, and by virtue of its membership of United Nations and Nato, the Federal Republic is under obligation to contribute to international security.

When the "coalition of people with no military service and conscientious objectors" joined the government the basic convictions of many individuals clashed with the responsibility to abide by the state's monopoly of force. But they preferred to put this contradiction out of mind rather than seek clarification.

Yet the changing nature of war and the government's responsibility to afford protection in no way means that the fundamental commitment to non-violence has been abandoned, rather that it has been cast in the mould of national policy. The object is to contain and prevent force and ultimately achieve its total elimination, to (re-)establish legitimate government and statehood, to keep the power of the state within the bounds of national and international law, to place security matters within the domain of the civil authorities and establish a legal framework for international relations, and to make every effort to resolve conflicts with civil means. "Violence breeds counter-violence" is an old experience which cautions us to be mindful of the rule of law when considering force.

When discussing the non-use of force, it is helpful to consider the expressions used in English. The German word "Gewalt" can mean "violence", "force" or "authority". The purpose of the Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence which began in 2001 is to eliminate chaotic violence outside the rule of law, but it does not imply abolishing legitimate means of force in accordance with the law.

The Greens are the party in the Federal Republic and in the Bundestag who have been the most active, the most specific and the most credible in following pacifist policies within the meaning described above, despite the fact that the task of building structures for the resolution of conflicts by civil authorities, or successful but in many cases not visible attempts at crisis prevention, are unspectacular and thus hard to "sell" in the media (see below).

Greens have no reason to take instruction on the non-use of force from the PDS or to allow that party to don their mantle. Their claim to be the ultimate anti-war and peace party is a sham. Their rejection of the Bundeswehr's participation in military operations, even for peacekeeping purposes under a UN mandate, is merely party political tactics and runs contrary to better judgement. The more they acquire the ability to share in government, the more they are going to change course, especially in the field of foreign policy. That is foreseeable. They have already acknowledged their support for Nato in the agreement between Berlin's coalition partners, but we perceive no PDS involvement in developing the possibilities for the settlement of conflicts by civil authorities. So what they call the ultimate address for disappointed Greens and supporters of the peace movement is looking more and more like an accommodation address.

On the other hand, discord among the Greens over matters of peace policy reveal our own deficiencies. Their opposition to war and their commitment to non-violence often sound too dogmatic, focusing almost exclusively on military and economic factors. In many instances they only activate these drawbacks where they themselves refuse to participate in military operations on grounds of party identity (a kind of generalised conscientious objection). The collective consciousness then focuses on air operations over Kosovo and Germany's support for Enduring Freedom, but not on the entire Bosnia war including Srebenica and Sarajevo, Rwanda, or the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

At the same time there is little inclination to discuss the more recent challenges in the field of security and peace policy, let alone participate in the general work and policy-making for peace at whatever level. For years active pacifists have found the Greens ambivalent towards the pilot project for the prevention of violence, i.e. the Civil Peace Service. Although, thanks to a Green initiative, government support for the project was anchored in the coalition agreements with the SPD in North-Rhine Westphalia and in the Federal Government (1998) and although we have been helping in its development, the support has not been as broadly based as it could have been. The generally poorer response at conferences examining the implications for peace ensuing from the war in Kosovo and considering practical means of crisis prevention is symptomatic of this. What is missing is "a pro-pacifism aiming to create a culture of peace" (H.G. Richter).

There are plausible reasons for the declining interest in foreign policy and peacekeeping, only it is strange that this is often accompanied by highly principled stances and carelessness in assessing Red-Green foreign policy. The result is that time and again Greens, through pure negligence, find themselves taking sides against one another. This provides useful ammunition for political opponents ranging from PDS to FPD.

Confusion of the different levels of action, of the differing roles of party members and the options available to them, has been one of the main reasons for misguided expectations – and thus disappointment – and explains why "Berliners" and some grassroots members, Greens and supporters of the peace movement, often find themselves talking at cross-purposes. No question, some Greens and Social Democrats make the most of their opportunities to hold on to power, and there are anti-militarists and supporters of the peace movement who get bogged down in dogmatism and relapse into sectarianism. But it would be wrong and counter-productive to allow such criticism to escalate into general mutual accusations.

Where those different levels of action are viewed dispassionately we find individuals, social players and government policies can make their own specific contributions to the mutual task of preventing and reducing force and at the same time fostering peace. The criterion for all government policy in this field is not the achievement of a complete absence of force but how it can help contain and prevent it and at the same time safeguard an open society. By contrast, the criterion for those supporting the peace movement is not what they can do to stop the direct use of military force but what they can do to help prevent violence in society and prepare the ground for peace.

Against this background practising pacifists and politicians working for peace at national level especially can argue and cooperate with each other, both inside and outside the Green Party, with good, interesting results. This has been my encouraging experience over a good number of years with sections of the peace movement, the Nottuln peace initiative, the citizens' actions group FREIe HEIDe/Brandenburg, the Civil Peace Service Forum, Peace Brigade International, members of Pax Christi, IPPNW, the Basic Rights Committee, and many others. Where, on the other hand, pacifists make unconditional demands and their criticism turns into a reproduction of stereotype enemy-images and demonisation, the common ground disappears.

From the very beginning most supporters of ecological and alternative groups have either dissociated themselves from the armed services or rejected them out of hand. Particularly large is the gap between Green criteria and (traditional) military concepts. The great majority of male Greens are conscientious objectors. Few of them have any personal experience or knowledge of the Bundeswehr, hence the widespread tendency to adopt categorical positions.

The basic situation remains unchanged: the purpose of armed forces with their extensive range of ever more sophisticated armaments is to fight and physically destroy the enemy. They kill, mutilate and destroy. The use of armed force in war is the worst-case scenario for human rights. It is at the same time an extremely treacherous instrument (generates its own momentum and leads to brutality, has terrible consequences for the civilian population, especially women), as every war demonstrates, e.g. those currently raging in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Israel. Irrespective of its objectives, war is a great evil. In some cases it may be justified (e.g. the allied defensive war against Nazi Germany), but it can never be "just". Its gravity should never be toned down by referring to it as the "ultima ratio", as if it were merely the last resort in a whole range of measures. Where the human right to life is systematically nullified an indispensable mark is overstepped.

Despite all the propaganda to the contrary, military force is nearly always used as a means of asserting national interests and pursuing political objectives. A policy aimed at military supremacy tends to evoke asymmetrical responses from the enemy rather than act as a deterrent. Armed forces and military equipment are extremely costly and always a terrible strain on national resources - to the detriment of social welfare, sustainable development, and measures to enhance peace. The Bush administration presents us with a blatant example. The US military budget is to increase by 30% to 451 billion dollars by the year 2007 – at the expense of social, health, environmental, infrastructure and youth education programmes. Owing to their pronounced command structure based on strict obedience, armed services constitute a domain very remote from democracy. The Soviet/Russian army is an example of a military culture that is altogether inhumane.

In the light of these fundamental experiences well-founded criticism of militarism must continue, and the Greens must retain their anti-militaristic role, that is to say, they must remain sensitive to and take steps to counteract any tendency to trust or be obsessed with the military as well as interventionist and hegemonic military policies, in other words the actual militarisation of foreign policy.

Yet whilst remarking on the traditional nature of armed forces as a means of asserting national objectives, we should not overlook the changes in their functions that have taken place since the Second World War, especially in the 90s. Within the Nato framework the forces of former enemies have not only become allies but in many ways integrated with one another. There are numerous instances of cooperation with the armies of the former Eastern bloc countries which help prevent any renationalisation of forces and are conducive to military reform along democratic lines. Germany's "citizen in uniform" mode,l which used to be the exception, is now much in demand.

When involved in missions within the framework of a UN mandate, armed forces can be a necessary and useful instrument for maintaining and consolidating peace, for enhancing the nation-building process. They have a kind of police role because they have the means to rigorously secure compliance and discourage resistance (in contrast to the blue helmets of former times) and thus ensure a minimum of public safety and discipline.

Military force is used only to the extent necessary and within the framework of agreed rules of engagement. "Blue" elements (openness, de-escalation, negotiation, compromise and civil-military cooperation) are an important feature of their role. So too is their broadly multinational composition. The Bundeswehr's UN training centre in Hammelburg and its centre for verification operations are exemplary and internationally recognised facilities for these kinds of "New Forces" (von Bredow).

Such peacekeeping missions serving to prevent war and demilitarise certain regions – not combative military operations – have meanwhile become standard assignments for many armies, not least the Bundeswehr. Consider, for instance, the SFOR, KFOR, the Macedonia mission and the ISAF operation in Afghanistan, participation in observer missions, arms control and disarmament operations of the UN, OSCE and EU. The fact that the first member of the Bundeswehr to be killed by the enemy (October 2001) was a senior officer in the medical corps attached to the UN observer mission in Georgia underlines this point.

By contrast, the public tend to see little distinction between military, combat and war operations, largely because there is a lack of proper definitions which neither belittle the magnitude of the operation nor prove to be wholesale generalisations. The term "humanitarian intervention", for instance, sounds too euphemistic and ideological and should therefore be avoided as far as possible.

In the exceptional circumstances I mentioned, international law permits the use of force ranging from embargoes to armed combat within the scope of police action organised along military lines. The report submitted to the UN Secretary General on 18 December 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty sets out the criteria justifying military intervention on humanitarian grounds. However legitimate and necessary such operations may be in individual cases, comprehensive "peace enforcement" involving armed combat during international and domestic conflicts continues to be a major problem since it is unpredictable and fraught with risk, moreover such missions are very expensive and their effect doubtful.

The new wars demonstrate quite clearly the feasibility, or otherwise, and the limitations of military operations. Warlords and their warriors who thrive on war cannot be brought under control without military intervention. At the same time, it is illusory to believe that peace can be enforced by military means in the chaos of such wars. Only multi-dimensional, integrated and coherent initiatives stand any chance of success.

Where military action serves to prevent or contain the use of force to maintain collective security within the framework of the UN Charter it becomes an instrument of an emerging world domestic policy and its monopoly of legitimate, organised violence.

Those in favour of strengthening the United Nations so that it can fulfil this role cannot refuse to accept the consequences. And one of them, inevitably, is the willingness to supply rapidly deployable forces and play an active part in UN peacekeeping operations. If the PDS disapproves of the ongoing deployment of military forces in the Balkans, and if some sections of the peace movement want all operational forces disbanded, then this would be tantamount to abandoning the current efforts to contain hostilities in the Balkans and paving the way for remilitarisation and escalation of the violence. Such demands weaken the UN system rather then strengthen it.

But although military operations of this kind are being conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, this does not alter the fact that they swallow up huge financial resources and often involve considerable risk, hence their justifiability always requires careful consideration. If only for this reason, military force should not be regarded as a "normal" instrument in the pursuit of political objectives.

The two lines of military development – that of the United Nations and that of national self-interest, are not easily distinguishable and vary from country to country. The military potential - the ability to mount operations over great distances, i.e. intervene – is in both cases basically the same and is shared within the Alliance for purposes of collective defence. In the Federal Republic, the Bundeswehr's future line of development is not fully clear, even though none of the parliamentary parties want it to be an “army of intervention” and the Federal Government follows the UN line. By contrast, the ongoing US war against terror is diverging increasingly from the UN course. It is endorsing the law of the jungle rather than strengthening international law; the instrumentalisation of legitimate means of self-defence for hegemonic and domestic purposes; total focus on the military aspects rather than an attempt to establish comprehensive security and tackle the root causes; a solo effort supported by flexible coalitions; a policy to increase and upgrade military potentials rather than enhancie collective security.

The partial relegitimation of the use of military power among Red-Green former supporters of the peace movement has nurtured a new kind of ingenuousness with regard to the military instrument and its potential abuse in the pursuit of power-political objectives. That is as mistaken as it is dangerous. Quite a number of them used to believe the armed forces capable of all kinds of terrible things, but nowadays they will entrust them with any mission. Also short-sighted and counter-productive is the widespread disregard for military matters, particularly within the left-wing and Green spectrum, which comes with a general warning not to strip them of their taboos, with the result that they deny themselves any say in the development or deployment of the armed forces. What is needed is a more restrained and responsible approach to all things military, which must also include well-founded criticism.

For many years, security policy in Germany has been short on democracy, that is to say comprehensive debate to achieve agreement on the role, capacities and limitations of our armed forces in the context of foreign and defence policy has been avoided since the East-West confrontation came to an end, under both Rühe and Scharping.

The extensive report on reform of the Bundeswehr presented by the Weizsäcker Commission was quickly outmanoeuvred. Green Party proposals on the future of the Bundeswehr were well-received among peace researchers and open-minded military leaders, but they fell on deaf ears in the coalition. Neither the political establishment nor the public at large took up the suggestion in the “Peace Message” of the Catholic bishops, and in the Memorandum of the Evangelical Church, that a fundamental understanding should be sought on the ethics of peace. Most peace-promoting organisations stayed rooted in their basic anti-military positions and were loath to get involved in debate on the future of our armed force. Instead, questions of German security were merely the subject of executive action on a case-by-case basis, culminating in a full-blown quantum leap after 11 September.

Seeing that reform of the Bundeswehr is getting nowhere, that the paradigms have changed since 11 September, and that the Federal Government has proclaimed Germany’s increased global responsibility, public debate on the strategic goals of foreign and security policy is an urgent necessity.

Considering that the responses to unrestrained terror themselves are becoming increasingly unrestrained (i.e. in terms of our understanding of defence, operational areas and forms of deployment), and considering the growing divide between the United States and its allies, there is all the more reason to discuss ways and means of enhancing European security and defence policy, all aspects of collective, comprehensive and preventive defence, as well as fresh initiatives towards arms control and disarmament. We also have to clarify not only the tasks but also the limitations of German foreign and security policy.

This key debate should embrace and be supported by all who take a close interest in German efforts to promote peace. Only then will proposals for Bundeswehr reform enhancing the elaboration of a world domestic policy have any chance of falling on fertile ground.

Those who criticise the course followed by the Federal Government and the Greens call themselves "opponents", and their political adversaries, by implication, "proponents" of war. But what tells us whether anyone really is anti-war and pro-peace is not the volume of their pronouncements but what is actually done, what part is played in measures to prevent or terminate real wars and the extensive use of force – through involvement in operations during a crisis and in the development of crisis-prevention capabilities, through arms control and disarmament, through structure–building to promote human rights and democracy, through measures to combat poverty, international environmental policy, placing international relations within legal frameworks, intercultural dialogue, and efforts to strengthen the United Nations and the OSCE.

German foreign policy, with a Green minister at the helm, has since 1999 been particularly effective in helping to contain hostilities in the Balkans: as initiator of the Kosovo Peace Plan and the Stability Pact; in supporting the democratic opposition to Milosevic which greatly helped the peaceful October revolution in Belgrade; in preventing critical situations from developing in southern Serbia and Macedonia. Macedonia would long since have deteriorated into an explosive civil war but for the relatively early, coherent and energetic intervention of the "community of states" led by the EU and with the support of NATO and the OSCE. In spite of all the shortcomings, Macedonia has been a good example of the art of crisis-prevention.

German support for Enduring Freedom is confined to monitoring sea lanes, the engagement of some 100 specialist troops in direct combat with Al Quaida terrorists in Afghanistan, and providing logistical support. Transport flights of up to three Transall aircraft a day to Turkey as from 26 November 2001 were stopped on 10 January 2002. The ABC-weapon specialists currently participating in exercises in Kuwait may only be deployed for anti-terrorist operations and disaster relief measures, but not for any attack on Iraq.

The Federal Republic is also largely involved in international efforts to terminate the chaos resulting from 23 years of war. The first initiatives towards a post-Taliban Afghanistan originated in Berlin. It was no coincidence that four key conferences on Afghanistan were held in Germany: the Petersberg conference, a meeting of the Afghanistan Support Group, another with Afghan civilian representatives, and a recent meeting to discuss plans for the country’s police force. The German embassy in Kabul is focusing its efforts on education, women and civil society, and particularly demining activities. Having been prevented from attending school for five years, some ten thousand Afghan girls are now receiving tuition again in 15 schools in Kabul, which have been reopened with German assistance. The Federal Government is leading the efforts to rebuild the Afghan police force and has set aside ten million euro for this purpose. This is the most important task of all.

The Federal Republic is confidently maintaining its solidarity with the United States, but it is by no means unconditional.

The development of infrastructure for dealing with civil conflicts, as stated in the coalition agreement, was begun without delay: providing for more crisis-prevention measures in the context of development cooperation and promotion of the Civil Peace Service, training of civilian specialists for international UN and OSCE peace-keeping missions, establishing the Federal Foundation for Peace Research, and the systematic promotion of crisis-prevention projects.

The Federal and state governments are doing exemplary work in helping to strengthen international police missions (CIVPOL), which are of strategic importance for the effective consolidation of peace and demilitarisation. Together with the Scandinavian countries in particular, the Federal Government has been very active in the OSCE and EU advocating new capacities for civil crisis management. Within the ESDP framework, the non-military crisis management elements (police, justice and administrative assistance) are likely to be in place sooner than the military pillar. The Federal Cabinet has just adopted two bills envisaging cooperation with the future International Criminal Court. These are but a few examples of Red-Green[1] involvement in peace-keeping activities.

We realise that the measures taken so far mark progress towards effective crisis prevention, but it is marred by some decisions on the export of arms and government-guaranteed loans which were adopted in spite of Green opposition, and by the temporary impression that we are identifying ourselves unconditionally with American power politics. The discrepancy between the capacity for military response to crisis situations and preventive civilian measures is still considerable, despite the fact that the gap between military and civil expenditure for crisis regions like Macedonia and Afghanistan is narrowing all the time. The Federal Government has earmarked 153 million euro for ISAF and Enduring Freedom in 2002, for reconstruction 80 million, police aid 10 million and humanitarian assistance 51 million in 2001).

But compared with 1998 levels and the amounts provided by most other countries, these contributions are a definite breakthrough in the field of crisis prevention. Much of the thrust comes from the Greens in Berlin. The fact that this real progress is ignored by a public who only see the military aspect and denounced or arrogantly scorned in anti-war quarters as "alibi" assistance does not diminish its value.

The encouraging response to Green efforts, especially from those actively engaged in peace-keeping work in crisis regions and international and non-governmental organisations, shows that we are heading in the right direction.

Over the next few months the Alliance 90/Greens will only be able to hold their ground through self-confidence, solidarity and credibility. The doubts and disappointments expressed by some (former) Green supporters, especially where the party’s identity in terms of war and peace is concerned, must be taken seriously and given due consideration. We must discern the new peace-keeping challenges and the scope for action in the whole breadth of German foreign policy, which the Greens have helped develop, and in doing so strike a fair balance between achievement, compromise and deficiency.

What I am saying is that the Alliance 90/Greens have reason to be self-confident. Under the severe conditions of complex crises and multilateral politics, they and their foreign minister stand for an active anti-war and pro-peace policy in and together with Europe. The task of developing a Europe that has the authority to maintain peace requires the support of the Greens in a responsible role.

[1]. For a complete survey see Von der Friedensbewegung zur Friedenspolitik – Elemente einer Weltinnenpolitik, decision of the parliamentary party dated11 December 2001, lang & schlüssig 14/48; Gewaltvorbeugung konkret: Zwischenbilanz rot-grüner Maßnahmen zur zivilen Krisenprävention, lang & schlüssig 14/27; Wer den Frieden will, bereitet den Frieden vor. Dokumentation der Fachtagung zur Stärkung der zivilen Säulen internationaler Friedensmissionen, lang & schlüssig 14/45

Infobrief des Fraktions-AK IV Außenpolitik/Menschenrechte/Abrüstung, February 2002. For examples of successful crisis prevention measures in Macedonia, see the Federal Government’s report of 10 December 2001, BT-Drs. 14/7891

In a changing world, a changing peace party