Military Buildup Research Articles

A Maritime Security Regime for Northeast Asia

The Six Party Talks can be the crucible for a regional mechanism in Northeast Asia. This mechanism should originally focus on maritime security. The rationale includes the region's geography, competing maritime and island claims, the resultant maritime military buildup and changing priorities, increasing frequency of dangerous incidents, and the existence of a foundation for conflict avoidance and resource sharing. The Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea could serve as a model for a similar Declaration for Northeast Asian Seas that may ultimately include guidelines for activities in others' Exclusive Economic Zones. Key words: Northeast Asia, multilateral - East Asia, maritime security, territorial disputes Conceptual and Practical Context The Functional Approach to Conflict Resolution The first step toward the peaceful settlement of conflict is the creation of a sense of community.1 The creation of such a community presupposes at least the mitigation and minimization of conflict, so that shared interests and common needs outweigh the factors that separate the parties. A functional approach can help the growth of positive and constructive common work and of common habits and interests, decreasing the significance of artificial boundaries and barriers or the lack thereof by overlaying them with a web of common activities and administrative agencies. The challenge then for Northeast Asia is to develop a variety of arrangements that will demonstrate that a habit of dialogue and working together can build common-and eventually cooperative- security. Tactical learning-in which behavior toward cooperation changes-must be replaced by complex learning in which values and beliefs about reaching goals through cooperation change. In this context, cooperation in the maritime spheres satisfies the conceptual criteria and can be a means of building confidence, reducing tension, and eliminating points of conflict. It can also have positive spillover effects on relations between nations. With progress in the Six Party Talks (6PT) regarding the Korea conundrum, analysts and politicians alike are again thinking and talking about a new architecture for Northeast Asia.2 At the 2006 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Regional Forum meeting in Kuala Lumpur, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for a robust dialogue on Northeast Asian security that could help overcome historical tensions, increase security, and create a better basis for enhanced prosperity throughout the region.3 In February 2007, the parties to the 6PT agreed to negotiate a peace regime in appropriate separate forum.4 In January 2008, Rice expressed her belief that the Six Party Talks can be used for purposes such as forging a regional mechanism.5 New Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is an enthusiastic supporter of the concept- if it includes Australia.6 The general hope is that the process of managing transition on the Korean peninsula can create new patterns of cooperation and thus lay the foundation for a 21st century architecture in the region. However, some-perhaps many-in ASEAN see the proposal as diluting the ASEAN Regional Forum's position as the only region-wide overarching mechanism.7 Thus, starting small and specific in Northeast Asia might be more politically palatable to all concerned. In this context, some prominent analysts are urging Japan and the United States to build international institutions initially focused on concrete issues such as resource sharing, environment and particular issues, e.g., maritime conflict, that could gradually develop into larger institutions.8 Inspiring Examples from Maritime Agreements In building mutual security, there are several significant reasons to focus initially on the maritime sphere. Much of Northeast Asia is essentially maritime, encompassing peninsulas, archipelagos, disputed islands, strategic straits, and sea lanes. …

‘Estafa’: Dictatorship, debt, weapons and pensions in Argentina—An alternative perspective on pension ‘reform’ in Latin America

Analysis of pension reforms in Latin America does not take into account the role of international debt and the reasons for it. Taking Argentina as an important case study, the paper explains how enormous external debt was incurred to buy financially unproductive weapons during the 1976–1983 military junta and suggests that state pensions were decimated to pay for it. The subsequent introduction of a part-private system was not based on conventional actuarial concerns but was the result of a military build-up supported by ‘the West’, which attributed pension failure to local issues. Argentina later introduced measures to reconstruct a state system.

"The Best Army that Can Be Put in the Field in the Circumstances": The U.S. Army, July 1951–July 1953

Between July 1951 and July 1953 the U.S. Army found itself attempting to support both a field army in Korea and the NSC 68 military buildup. During these years, however, the Army suffered from a crippling manpower dilemma, both in quantity and in quality, the result of a limited national mobilization and President Harry S. Truman's decision to cut the Army's budget without cutting its missions. This dilemma adversely affected combat effectiveness, readiness, and morale. For some career soldiers, the stresses of this period exposed aspects of the Army's institutional culture that they found disturbing.

Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho

Aneoliberal tion with the Bush administrations military imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is supported by the many private think tanks, foundations, and university foreign policy centers that have since the 1970s played significant roles in the triumph of neoconservatism in the U.S. government. Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) is an excellent example of how neoliberal rhetoric is now being deployed by neoconservatives and the importance they have placed on cultural issues.1 For the past few years and especially in the critical period following 9/11, I have argued the importance of studying the long history of U.S. imperialism in order to understand the continuity of our current imperialist ventures abroad with traditional modes of political, economic, and cultural imperialism.2 I have also consistently recognized the need to theorize and interpret new methods of cultural imperialism appropriate to the postmodern economic conditions fundamental to globalizing capitalism. Within these new transnational flows of goods, information, services, research and technology, cultural products, lifestyles, and political institutions, the U.S. nation continues to play a crucial role, despite the apparent postnational character of these phenomena. In the aftermath of 9/1 1, U.S. nationalism has taken on a peculiarly isolationist aura that is at the same time compounded by a deep investment in its own international deployment. The nearly hysterical patriotism legitimating the military build-up for the second Gulf war and our continuing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are compounded by a rhetorical emphasis on the United States as the democratic model for the rest of the world.3 Although this emerging mythology cannot be read with complete clarity at this moment, it has certain precedents in nineteenth-century Manifest Destiny, even its late-

From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna’s ‘American Life’

AbstractThis paper explores ambiguities of political resistance and anti-war protest in Madonna’s music video, ‘American Life’. We begin by tracing the history of the making, promotion and eventual withdrawal of the video in the context of the military build-up and media campaign that preceded the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In these opening sections, we focus in particular on the (perhaps deliberately generated) controversy surrounding the work, and its problematic relationship with contemporary corporate mass media. We then proceed to describe the visual contents of the video, and present three distinct readings of it: first, as a gesture of overt protest against the war; second, as a work that is unaware of the manner in which its signifying textures unwittingly and covertly celebrate the culture it would critique, thus nullifying its overt subversive gesture; and third, as a work that is in fact far more politically resistant than it knows, through an uncanny form of protest that is dependent upon this very complicity.

Northeast Asia Policy Under George W. Bush: Doctrine in Search of Policy

IntroductionThe Bush Doctrine stipulates that unilateral action, regime change, and preemptive attack now define U.S. foreign policy. In Northeast Asia, however, the doctrine has run up against unpleasant realities that ought to be causing-but so far do not appear to have caused-its abandonment. Instead, the doctrine's new realism, embellished with strong ideological predispositions, has made the United States odd man out in Asia. This paper critically examines the Bush administration's policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC; China), the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It concludes that, contrary to the view of some observers (Rose 2005) and notwithstanding tactical modifications, the Bush Doctrine remains the essential underpinning of U.S. policy in George W. Bush's second administration. Northeast Asia's present and future look very different to Chinese, North Korean, Japanese, and U.S. officials. Reconciling those perspectives will have great bearing on prospects for security in the region, but there must also exist the will to reconcile them. Domestic political factors come into play here-the roles, for example, of bureaucratic selfinterest, party alignments, interpretations of history, and ideological preconceptions. In the Bush administration, these factors have lent themselves to a worldview that is unprecedented exceptionalist and hegemonic in its approach to national security affairs. The predominant influence behind this worldview is the group of so-called neoconservatives-people such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz who held national security posts in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. Even so-called realists around the president, such as Condoleezza Rice, seem to subscribe to the neoconservatives' belief that the unipolar moment for the United States has arrived.The Bush Doctrine dubs this new realism a distinctly American internationalism. The doctrine asserts that the United States should take advantage of its enormous and unchallengeable power in world affairs to shape the new century (White House 2002; Gurtov 2006; Ikenberry 2002; and Hendrickson 2002). The 9/11 attacks have provided the opportunity to do so. No state can effectively challenge the United States militarily; nor is there any other viable political or economic model that can pose an alternative to the American way of life. In sustaining superiority, Bush administration officials have said, the use and threat to use force-preventively if necessary-must have wider application than in the past; however, diplomacy-multilateral diplomacy in particular-must operate on a shorter leash than previously. A sustained military buildup, with new capabilities to match wider missions, is crucial to implementing the new doctrine. The help and advice of allies, friendly countries, and international organizations of all kinds are useful only so long as they serve U.S. purposes; otherwise, they are dispensable. International law and cooperation must serve the larger objective of restoring order in the international system.If the above summary has merit, its implications for U.S. policy in Northeast Asia are considerable. First, it means that the Pentagon plays a key role in shaping national security policy. Second, neoconservative domination of the policy process means that intelligence findings run a considerable risk of being politicized to serve ideological predispositions. Third, the overall thrust of U.S. policy is to seek to impose U.S. will by relying on military preponderance to send a message to rival states, with scant appreciation for their security concerns and historical sensitivities. But, as seems to have happened in the second George W. Bush administration, such predilections may be undercut by other developments: the high costs of counterinsurgency in Iraq and the accompanying revelations of illegalities and false pretenses in that war, the resistance to U. …

In Search of the Transmission Mechanism of Fiscal Policy [with Comments and Discussion

Most economists would agree that a hike in the federal funds rate will cause some slowdown in growth and inflation, and that the bulk of the empirical evidence is consistent with this statement. But perfectly reasonable economists can and do disagree even on the basic effects of a shock to government spending on goods and services: neoclassical models predict that in general, private consumption and the real wage will fall, while some neo-Keynesian models predict the opposite. This paper discusses alternative time series methodologies to identify government spending shocks and to estimate their effects. Applying these methodologies to data from the United States and three other OECD countries provides little evidence in favor of the neoclassical predictions. Using the U.S. input-output tables, the paper then turns to industry-level evidence around two major military buildups to shed light on the effects of government spending shocks.

Secretary Rumsfeld Questions Chinese Military Buildup

Secretary Rumsfeld Questions Chinese Military Buildup

The Rise of China

This article makes a general assessment of India's perceptions of and responses to the rise of China. There exist three schools of perceptions and responses: those who view China as a benign power and prefer an appeasement approach to it, those who regard China as a threatening power and propose a containment-cum-encirclement policy, and those who consider China as a competitive power and favour a balanced engagement strategy. The assessment is focused on the mainstream school of thought (which perceives China as a competitive power and responds with balanced engagement) on several dimensions of China's rise, its economic growth and military build-up in particular.

Nation-building in the land of eternal counter-insurgency: Guatemala and the contradictions of the alliance for progress

This article will examine the consequences of US-sponsored development assistance programmes in Guatemala during the 1960s, the so-called Alliance for Progress decade. Recently declassified and unclassified State Department records reveal that the US Agency for International Development (usaid) mission in Guatemala helped organise numerous co-operatives, community leadership programmes and modernisation projects that empowered disenfranchised Mayan Indians and poor Ladinos (mestizos or persons of mixed European and indigenous ancestry). At the same time, the John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson administrations assisted the Guatemalan government in creating a repressive counter-insurgency programme whose victims included not just communist guerrillas but also members of popular movements who had been mobilised by usaid. Washington resolved the contradiction by abandoning ‘soft development’ programmes in favour of a military build-up that eventually resulted in the deaths of more than 200 000 Guatemalans.

The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914-1930 (review)

Reviewed by: The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914–1930 James Biedzynski The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914–1930. By William Mulligan. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. ISBN 1-57181-908-8. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 247. $75.00. General Walther Reinhardt appears only sporadically in the scholarly literature on the Weimar Republic. Unlike figures such as Paul von Hindenburg, Friedrich Ebert, or Gustav Stresemann, the reader really must dig for mention of him. Professor Mulligan has brought together a variety of sources in the book under review here to give us the first complete view of General Reinhardt. Reinhardt was a professional soldier and nationalist who created the Reichswehr, Germany's first truly national army. Before 1918, the Prussian Army along with the armies of the larger German states constituted a German army under the command of the Kaiser. After 1919, this was swept away and the army was commanded from Berlin and responsible to the President of the Republic. Germany would now have a single War Minister and not several (one for each component state of the old Reich). Organizing the Reichswehr was no mean feat. It had many opponents, such as the radical street militia, the ultra Right-wing Freikorps, and nervous Allied powers who desired as small a German army as possible. Reinhardt required a great deal of tact and diplomacy to accomplish his mission. Over time, the Reichswehr became a highly professional organization and served as a strong foundation for Hitler's military build-up during the 1930s. Mulligan tries to prove that Reinhardt created a prototype of the later Blitzkrieg type of warfare. We should note, however, that many German officers were doing a great deal of soul-searching about how to win the next war. We should not forget the path-breaking theories of generals Guderian and Rommel. The Blitzkrieg was ultimately a joint product of many minds. If German officers had anything in abundance during the Weimar era, it was time to think about what went wrong in 1918 and how victory might be attained the next time around. As Mulligan demonstrates, we should not lose sight of the fact that Reinhardt was a Rightist who disdained the 1918 armistice and the Versailles Treaty. He had ties to the Freikorps which in the long run were not conducive to formation of a professional army loyal to the Republic. The efforts he and his colleagues made to circumvent the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty were highly ingenious. We can only speculate about how Reinhardt would have handled a major war, but it likely would have been an impressive performance. Mulligan's research is prodigous and demonstrates to me that there remain important German officers of the interwar era of whose careers we know little. Perhaps his book will stimulate future biographies of these men. German military history during the Weimar period is more than generals Groener and Seeckt and it is high time we learn more of the other officers who built and managed the Reichswehr. James Biedzynski Middlesex County College Edison, New Jersey Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

John F. Kennedy and the missile gap

John F. Kennedy owed his victorious bid for the presidency as well as his success in reversing former president Dwight D. Eisenhower's military and economic policies while in office largely to his ability to exploit fears of an alleged Soviet strategic superiority, famously known as the gap. Capitalizing on American alarms about national security, within months after his inauguration, he won Congressional authorization for two supplemental defense appropriations that collectively increased the defense budget by more than 15 percent. Yet, argues Christopher Preble, the missile gap was a myth. The Kennedy administration perpetuated that myth to justify a massive military buildup that had profound implications for both the domestic economy and for American foreign relations. Eisenhower had warned against excessive military spending, but the missile gap scare shook the confidence of millions of Americans. In the face of presumed Soviet dominance, Eisenhower's New Look programs no longer appeared adequate. By electing Kennedy, U.S. citizens signaled their willingness to bear any burden in exchange for peace of mind. Little did they realize that Kennedy's new military strategy, known as Flexible Response, marked a commitment to a war economy that persisted through the final days of the Cold The myth of the missile gap and the policies that followed had a profound impact on U.S. Soviet relations. But by inducing doubts about America's capacity for world leadership, it also weakened the resolve of the nation's allies. On the home front and in the international arena, the missile gap shaped the outcome of the Cold War.

Plowshares to Swords and Back

This article reviews the military buildup of World War II that led to victory and, by an indirect route, to a richer world. The creation of the US armaments industry is breathtaking for the speed with which it developed. After the surprise attack at the close of 1941, it did not take much time for the country to respond. Shocked by a sneak attack, Americans were able to put their love affair with the car on hold to make war machines. The entire US automotive industry converted its plants to the war effort, and much of that industrial might was devoted to building airplanes. Technologies developed for the war were quickly given civilian uses. After years of rationing and the Great Depression before that, there was plenty of demand stored up. GPS today keeps watch on truck fleets, tracks stolen cars, and serves a multitude of other civilian uses that save lives, property, and money. The Predator and other unpiloted aerial vehicles are believed to represent the future of commercial air transportation.

Alliances, Arms Buildups and Recurrent Conflict: Testing a Steps-to-War Model

Alliances and arms races have received considerable attention in the causes-of-war literature. While a large amount of empirical research has pursued these topics separately, multivariate conditional combinations of these processes have been relatively scarce to date. An argument for doing so is provided by Vasquez's steps-to-war theory which organizes international relations into an interactive complex of factors, including territorial disputes, interstate rivalry, recurrent crises, alliances, military buildups, and war onset. A model linking indicators of these processes is developed and tested for the 1919–95 era. Substantial empirical support for their interactions emerges. Territorial disputes in the context of rivalry and recurrent crises, aggravated by military buildups and asymmetrical external alliance situations, combine to make escalations to war more probable. Hopefully, an improved understanding of interstate escalatory dynamics can serve as a foundation and stimulus for more interactive atte...

Government Employment and the Dynamic Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks

Since World War II, about 75 percent of government consumption in the U.S. economy has been spent on labor services. I distinguish the goods and the employment compensation components of government consumption in assessing the effects of fiscal shocks on main macroeconomic variables. Identifying exogenous fiscal shocks with the onset of military buildups, I show that they lead to a significant increase in hours worked and output in the government sector. Allowing for the distinction between the two components of government consumption improves the quantitative performance of the neoclassical model. In particular, the model with government employment does a good job at accounting for the dynamic response of private consumption to a fiscal policy shock. Government employment compensation acts as a transfer payment for households, thereby mitigating the wealth effect on consumption and labor supply associated with fiscal shocks.

Crime Reporting as a Measure of Institutional Development

Crime Reporting as a Measure of Institutional Development

Strangulation from the Sea? A PRC Submarine Blockade of Taiwan

ple’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of the most important challenges for U.S. foreign policy.1 Although many scholars judge current U.S.-China relations to be at their best in many years, President Chen Shui-bian’s moves toward gradual independence before Taiwan’s March 2004 presidential election, which were met by warnings and threats from the mainland, are a reminder that the Taiwan issue remains a potential source of instability.2 Further moves toward Taiwan’s independence during President Chen’s second term, such as rewriting the constitution, may very well lead to another Taiwan Strait crisis. The military buildup of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is largely focused on Taiwan, combined with the island’s disputed political status, make a PRC attack on Taiwan one of the most likely short-to-medium-term (next ave to ten years) threats to East Asian stability, and therefore U.S. economic and security interests.3 Could the PRC successfully use military force to settle the Taiwan issue? Scholarly debates about Chinese intentions and overall strategic goals in East Asia rarely address the prospects for a successful Chinese use of force Strangulation from the Sea?

Globalization and Generational Change: Syrian Foreign Policy between Regional Conflict and European Partnership

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century's Dawn: Global and Domestic Influence on Grand Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Fred Halliday, ‘The Middle East and the Politics of Differential Integration’, in Toby Dodge and Richard Higgott (eds.), Globalization and the Middle East (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2002), pp. 36–56. Leon Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 3–18. Specifically the autonomy of external constraints and internal pressures needed to adapt to the exigencies of the changing power balance in order to minimize costs and maximize benefits. See Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami (eds.), The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (Boulder CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 10–11, 20. Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria (London and Oxford: RIIA, Oxford University Press, 1965). Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 52–7; Avner Yaniv, ‘Syria and Israel: The Politics of Escalation’, in Moshe Ma'oz and Avner Yaniv (eds.), Syria under Assad: Domestic Constraints and Regional Risks (London: Croom-Helm, 1986, pp. 157–78. Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above, pp. 67–88. Patrick Clawson, Unaffordable Ambitions: Syria's Military Buildup and Economic Crisis (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1989). Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 226–66, 267–315, 344–9, 366–420; Moshe Ma'oz, Asad: the Sphinx of Damascus: a Political Biography (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), pp. 113–24, 135–48; Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above, pp. 151–5. Bashar's acceptance speech, The Syrian Arab News Agency website, July 21, 2000, ‘http://www:basharassad.org/english.htm’. The Middle East, March 1999, p. 35; Sept. 1999, p. 27. UNCTAD, World Investment Report (New York: UN, 1999); World Bank, The Little Data Book (New York: World Bank, 2001), pp. 9–12. Middle East International, April 6, 2001, pp. 7–8; 13 July 2001, p. 5; David Makovsky ‘Syria's Foreign Policy Challenges US Interests’, Policywatch, No. 513, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jan. 19, 2001. Patrick Seale, lecture, London, 2001. Rachel Bronson, ‘Syria: Hanging Together or Hanging Separately’, The Washington Quarterly, v. 23, Autumn, 2000; Yotam Feldner, ‘Escalation Games: Syria's Deterrence Policy, Part I: Brinkmanship’, MEMRI. (Middle East Media Research Institute), May 24,2001 www.memri.org; Middle East International, July 13, 2001, pp. 10–11. Middle East International, June 16, 2000, pp. 21–2. Middle East International, July 28, 2000, p. 14; Stratfor.com, ‘Global Intelligence Update’, February 29, 2000. Gary C. Gambill, ‘Syria's Foreign Relations: Iraq’, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, March, 2001, www.meib.org; Ibrahim Hamidi, Daily Star, Dec., 14, 2001. Makovsky, ‘Syria's Foreign Policy Challenges US Interests’; Middle East International, Feb. 9, 2001, p. 12; Yotam Feldner, ‘Escalation Games: Part II: Regional and International Factors Between Washington and Damascus: Iraq’, MEMRI, May 25, 2001. Al-Hayat, Sept., 28, 2001. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Middle East and North Africa, Jan. 7, 2002. ‘Joining the European Trade Club’, in Oxford Business Group, Emerging Syria 2002, London, 2002, p. 45. Ayman Abdul Nour, ‘Syria: Economic Reform and European Partnership’, unpublished policy paper, Damascus, June 12, 2001. Middle East International, March 23, 2001, pp. 14–15. The EU claims that it is not demanding an end to support prices in agriculture or of subsidies to the public sector. Its insistence is on transparency of trade rules and suppression of charges and barriers that distort import and export prices and flows. However, subsidizing products which could not compete with imports would be very costly for Syria. Skeptics include Michael Mann (1997), ‘Has Globalization ended the rise and rise of the Nation-state?’ Review of International Political Economy, v. 4, n. 3, Autumn, 1997, pp. 472–96; see also Toby Dodge and Richard Higgott, ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, in Dodge and Higgott (eds.), Globalization and the Middle East, pp. 13–35. Enthusiasts include K. Ohmae, The Borderless World (London: Collins, 1990) and The end of the Nation-State (New York: Free Press, 1995).

Strategic Thinking under Bush and Koizumi: Implications for the US-Japan Alliance

The current US administration's foreign and security policies have elicited strong reactions in many corners of the world. In the present climate of uncertainty--with the US conducting a huge military build-up around Iraq and North Korea rattling its saber--the US-Japan alliance looks likely to be severely tested in the months ahead. In this article, Professor Mike M. Mochizuki, director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University, examines the recent national security strategies of both Japan and the United States, and analyzes the underlying thinking in both camps. He notes that, despite popular perceptions, some of the viewpoints expressed by the current US administration do not differ that sharply from those of the Clinton administration. However, he also remarks that, despite repeated expressions of amity and solidarity by both Japan and the US, there is a palpable difference in view regarding the preferred methods for effecting change in the world's trouble-spots.

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

[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.