Chancellor Schröder somberly addressed the nation on March 24,
1999, shortly after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. He announced that
his government had made a difficult decision.
"After all, this is the first time since World War II that German
soldiers have been deployed in combat," he said. "We are not waging
a war, but we must bring about a peaceful solution in Kosovo, even
if that requires the use of military force."
Schröder
explained that this was the reason why the German government had
decided to take part in the military campaign against Slobodan
Milosevic's regime.
Today, the same governing coalition of Social Democrats and
Greens has rejected involvement in a war against Iraq, arguing that
military intervention would only serve to further destabilize the
Middle East. In 1999, the government used the opposite argument,
maintaining that the Balkans would be in greater danger if Germany
did not act.
Explaining the contradiction
"In Kosovo, we had a situation of
ongoing danger," Social Democratic Party foreign policy spokeswoman
Ute Zapf told Deutsche Welle in an interview. "It was about ethnic
expulsion and impending genocide. Now, in Iraq, we have a potential
threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction but no immediate
danger." Zapf insisted the problems were very different.
Germany's opposition parties hold a different view. Christoph
Schmidt, defense spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union and
its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, criticized
the government for committing itself too early to a "no" vote on
participation in order to assure Shröder's autumn reelection bid
last year. Now, Schmidt says, Schröder has no maneuvering room to
change his position.
"July 2002 was the point of departure," Schmidt explains. "Then
Schröder tried to take advantage of the mood against military
intervention (in Iraq) for the election campaign. The price was that
other foreign policy options were abandoned. And now, getting out of
that without losing face is hard."
Political perspectives
Günther Joetze believes that neither of these explanations is
sufficient. The former president of the Federal Academy for Security
Policy has written a book about Germany's role in the Kosovo
conflict and is working on a new book about its role in the Iraq
crisis. Joetze ascribes the German government's differing attitudes
toward Kosovo and Iraq to numerous motives. Above all, says Joetze,
the government holds different political perspectives for the two
crisis regions.
In Kosovo, the international community was aiming to enforce
humanitarian and democratic standards, which cannot be transmitted
to Iraq as easily, Joetze maintains. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein is
not considered the only rogue in the region, which is why the
government does not believe that a war will improve the
situation.
In the case of Kosovo, Joetze says, Germany's
partners in NATO expected that the German army, the Bundeswehr,
would take part in military operations. The government had little
choice but to say "yes," Joetze maintains. Plus, the government had
only been in office for a short time and had to prove itself in the
realm of foreign policy.
"The Social Democrats didn't want to
start their term in government with discord in the coalition,"
Joetze insists. "Whereas, for Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of
the Green Party, the question was a different one. It was made clear
to him (as the junior partner in the governing coalition) that he
could only remain foreign minister and a governing partner if he
towed the same line."
International peacekeeping
Today, Joetze says the government is
in a different position -- not just because it has been in office
for four years, but also because Germany is now the second-largest
contributor of troops to international peacekeeping operations
around the world.
"The defense minister and the chancellor
say we continually prove ourselves to be reliable partners," Joetze
says. "We are prepared to make our contribution. We can afford to
have another opinion on one particular question."
"(In 1999) the only international operation the Bundeswehr was
involved in was the air campaign against Yugoslavia. There weren't
any German troops in Macedonia or Afghanistan yet. The issue was the
first NATO troop deployment."
Besides, the mood among the
population has changed in the past four years. Then, most Germans
were in favor of a war against the Milosevic regime. Today, the
majority rejects a war against Saddam Hussein.
In that light, Joetze defends Schröder's firm position against an
Iraq war. Nor does he find the anti-war stance "reprehensible," as
some members of Germany's opposition government have. On the
contrary, he says, a major pillar of democratically elected
representatives is the idea of listening to the voice of the people
and acting on those wishes.
Claus
Häcking