“Freiburg Lawyers’ Declaration” of 10 February 2003 – On German Participation In A War Against Iraq

Extract

[Editors’ Comment: As is well known, opposition to a possible war against Iraq has been, within the Western world, among the strongest in Germany. Accurately sensing an overwhelming rejection of any armed intervention in Iraq among the German populace, the Social-Democrat / Green coalition government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer began to take a stance against the forcible disarmament of Iraq and the toppling of the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during their reelection campaign in the fall of 2002. Since then, and in the face of an ever more undisguised intention on part of the Bush administration to go ahead with a war under all circumstances, Schröder and Fischer have reiterated and reinforced their position, going as far as to rule out any active German participation in an armed intervention even if such was eventually called for by the Security Council. The German government's position has been complicated by the fact that Germany is currently an elected member of the Security Council, and held its rotating presidency in the month of February. Its relations with the United States have been strained on account of the incompatibility of views on how to resolve the Iraq crisis, and Germany has increasingly found itself in an isolated position on the international plane, though it has recently been joined by France and Russia in its attempts to yet avoid a war. The Christian-Democratic and Liberal opposition have alleged that the Schröder government has internationally isolated the country, and, worse, alienated it from its traditionally strongest ally, the United States, in order to distract from its current domestic unpopularity. Be this as it may, it is probably true to say that the great majority of Germans across all sections of society are genuinely strongly opposed to a war. Such pacifist sentiments link back to the peace movement of the late 1970s and 1980s which saw an equally broad cross-section of society march side by side to protest against the military build-up of the Cold War, and which, among others, brought about the Green party itself. Critics have alleged then and now that such radical pacifism is both naive and the wrong lesson to be learned from Germany's omnipresent Nazi-past. Interestingly, the non UN-sanctioned intervention in Kosovo had the strong support of both this just re-elected government, as well as the general public, although the more mainstream adherents of a German ‘no’ to an Iraq intervention point to the very different circumstances in that case.