Traps for the Peace Movement

The Search for New Ideals and Strategies

by Ursula Rüssmann

"Never again war" is a central conviction of the worldwide peace movement and it is advocated especially by pacifists. In the face of the crimes of the Yugoslavian army and police, fierce controversy developed this spring within the German peace movement about whether situations exist in which military intervention from outside is required for humanitarian reasons. The writer directs questions at moderate and radical pacifists.

What does it mean when some pacifists applaud NATO because it carries out a bombing war that is against international law - the end of ideals and resistance, or the beginning of wisdom? And what is it when other pacifists still cry "never again war" in spite of the brutal expulsion of hundreds of thousands - self-satisfaction, flight from reality, or practical prophetic civilness?

NATO’s war against Serbia plunged pacifist men and women in Germany into an even greater identity crisis than the war in Bosnia did. Here not only the core conflict, whether and when the use of military force can be legitimate, is involved. In addition, there are anxious doubts since the change in government. Can peace movement ideals even survive in the raw winds of political power? Are pacifists who want to remain true to themselves damned to eternal opposition?

The moderate pacifists and the radical pacifists have the same aim: non-violent world politics serving human rights. Both wings and all those who stand somewhere in between can contribute something. To do so, however, they must admit the predetermined breaking point or limit of their own position and be willing to learn. The path to different politics lies neither in "never again war" nor in "bombs for human rights" but in between.

The vocal radical pacifist opponents of the NATO war are bothersome for the generals and the diplomats and therefore necessary. They have set the military and military politicians under permanent pressure for justification that the bombs can bring more good than they have created damage. Radical pacifists incessantly rightly denounce the political mistakes of the past that allowed Serb leader Milosevic in the first place to become the danger because of which he is now being fought. And they rightly ask why Kurds, Tibetans, and other peoples are left in the lurch, but for the Kosovo-Albanians war is waged.

Nonetheless the sweeping "no to NATO’s war" creates great difficulties for its supporters when trying to persuade others. Some must put up with questions about whether their radical pacifist face-saving is more important than solidarity with the victims. For after all, were there really possibilities after the failure of Rambouillet other than air strikes to move Milosevic to give way? At the same time the convinced opponents of the bombing war are in danger of falling back into a one-dimensional anti-NATO program. In the eighties this was capable of binding together a broad movement, but no longer, and rightly so. Even if the power politics of NATO are more than problematic, the whole architecture of international security is unimaginable without the alliance. On the agenda is its greater integration and control, not abolition.

Among other things, it is the merit of the moderate pacifists that they have recognized this. They have the courage to admit that there can be criminal regimes inaccessible to negotiations and that as a final means a war for human rights can be necessary, even if its success is uncertain. Moderate pacifism asks itself when military force can be necessary and legitimate, and makes pacifist ideals thereby politically presentable.

In this the moderate camp risks quite a lot, above all, that they will be used for interest struggles under the cover of human rights. The war against Serbia is not merely stirred up to protect the Kosovo-Albanians but also to strengthen the influence of NATO. If supporters of human rights say yes to it today, can they then say no tomorrow to NATO intervention in a country that-perhaps according to reports of the Pentagon or the CIA-supposedly oppresses an ethnic group?

The other and essential danger lies in the creeping habituation to force as an instrument of policy. Disarmament worldwide and the shrinking of the budget of the ministry of defense in Germany will be harder to push through after the Kosovo war. SPD defense minister Rudolf Scharping has already demanded that the power of the army to react in crises must be increased. At this time no one in Germany speaks of a restructuring of finances to benefit the necessary civilian reaction to conflicts.

Traps for the peace movement are waiting everywhere. What remains as the quintessence? Where can and must pacifists of the different wings pull together in the same direction? Whoever holds to the absolute "no to war" favors a clean conscience over the chance to have a say in the responsible formation of politics of peace. Pacifists who wish to work on different, more non-violent politics must therefore develop, without limitations on thinking, criteria regarding conditions under which military force is allowed against a nation or is not allowed. Here, for example, the clear subordination of NATO to the UN should be untiringly demanded. It would be necessary to suspiciously ask about the political goals of an intervention and to take note of international law. Estimates by international aid and human rights organizations about the consequences of an intervention and the support of democratic elements of the civil society in the country involved would also be necessary. Before a military attack all other means would have to be exhausted. Afterwards it would be necessary to take stock of its usefulness.

More important than arguing about the war is the work on peaceful political resolution of conflict. The slogan "never again Auschwitz" as label for the program "war for human rights" has experienced a disturbing upswing in the past weeks. It has overshadowed alternative models proving that human rights can be pressed with civilian means: South Africa’s victory over Apartheid, for example, or the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. The pacifists of all camps meet in this task: to insist on such alternative models and to demand greater efforts for this form of sustainable politics for peace.

Urgently needed are new political priorities at national level, the extension of cooperation between nations and global support for a reformed, independent UN. Perhaps the time is ripe after the Kosovo war for a worldwide campaign with chances as good as for the one against Apartheid or for the outlawing of land mines - a campaign for a strong UN capable of action, and against an overly powerful NATO, which proved in the Balkans how little it can contribute to peace.