Germany's self-centered war debate

• Published date: 07 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

BERLIN ? Two months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, Jurgen Habermas, perhaps Germany's leading public intellectual, published a commentary that triggered one of the country's most ferocious political debates in decades. Habermas asked how Germany should position itself in the widening Russian-Ukrainian war. Germans still haven't reached any agreement on an answer.

At the start of the war, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was subject to a barrage of open letters, each signed by hundreds of leading public figures. Some took a hawkish position, advocating more forceful and active engagement on Ukraine's behalf. Others were dovish, pushing for a settlement that would permit Russia to claim some kind of victory and spare Europe from a widening and prolonged conflict. Habermas rejected both the bellicosity of the former and the naive pacifism of the latter. Instead, he supported Scholz's cautious approach, which seemed ? at the time ? to hold the most promise for a just peace settlement.

Since then, Russia's war on Ukraine's civilian population has intensified, and Germany has expanded its military and financial support for Ukraine to a level that would have been unthinkable last spring. But one year after the invasion, divisions are appearing within Scholz's coalition government, and open letters are pouring in again.

One such letter, penned by the grande dame of German feminism, Alice Schwarzer, and Die Linke (Left) party maverick Sarah Wagenknecht, leaves readers with only a vague sense of who bears responsibility for the war. In their "Manifesto for Peace," Schwarzer and Wagenknecht shy away from blaming Russia for its atrocities and call for negotiations, even if that means Ukraine must agree to some of Russia's territorial demands in exchange for a ceasefire or peace treaty.

They also call for massive demonstrations to pressure the government into reducing its military engagement and reneging on its pledges of arms deliveries. Having been co-signed by hundreds of German intellectuals, artists, and leftist politicians, their letter is causing an uproar within the political establishment ? especially now that right-wing and pro-Russian groups are known to be infiltrating the peace demonstrations. In my view, the manifesto is thinly veiled NIMBYism (not in my backyard), and a misguided effort to tie Germany's usual neutrality to explicit support for a negotiated settlement.

A couple days after the Schwarzer-Wagenknecht manifesto appeared, Habermas...