Jürgen Habermas on the Ukraine war “The West has no goals”
Those who supply weapons should not deny their share of responsibility for the victims, says Jürgen Habermas.
Habermas
discussing with students at the Philosophy Seminar, University of
Frankfurt am Main, January 1969 Photo: Max Scheler/Agentur Focus
By Thomas Meaney
[This
article posted on 7/22/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://taz.de/Juergen-Habermas-zum-Ukraine-Krieg/!vn6025235/.]
taz
FUTURZWEI | This interview was conducted by Thomas Meaney in the fall
of 2023 and first appeared in English in the literary magazine Granta.
Many thanks for the permission to reprint.
taz
FUTURZWEI: You have never shied away from taking a stand on the
political issues of the day. The Russian attack on Ukraine and the
question of how and to what extent the EU states and the USA should
support Ukraine is no exception. In 2022, you defended Olaf Scholz's
position – which many perceived as hesitant and evasive – and explained
how complicated the situation really was. You
argued that the Germans could not simply admire the national patriotism
of the Ukrainians and envy them, since one of the great achievements of
post-war Germans was to build a society in which the values of national
patriotism were already a thing of the past.
Jürgen
Habermas: What surprised me at the time, when I wrote the article
mentioned above two months after the start of the war,1 and what I still
do not understand today, is not directed against the politically
necessary partisanship of the West in the fight of Ukraine against a
murderous aggressor. There was never any doubt about the normative
assessment of the Russian invasion, and I also consider the military and
logistical support for Ukraine to be correct. What
shocked me in those first days and weeks of the war was the
thoughtlessness and short-sightedness of an emotionally charged and
unrestrained identification with the war as such. I have never been a
pacifist. But I experienced the invasion of Ukraine as the fateful
transgression of a threshold of inhibition that has become a matter of
course in Europe in the face of the archaic violence of war. But
then this outbreak of war with a nuclear power did not cause us to
think in a shocked way, but rather to immediately develop a highly
emotionalized warlike mood as if we were facing an enemy at our own
doorstep. These bellicose reflexes – as if we had not learned in the
meantime to regard “war in Europe” as a stage of civilization that has
been overcome – rather irritated me.
The question....
Your
question, however, relates to a particular aspect that irritated me
about this thoughtless willingness to go to war: it was not the natural
partisanship for the invaded Ukraine, but the lack of psychological
distance from their inflamed national consciousness. As
if the process of a population that is culturally, linguistically and
historically by no means homogeneous growing together into a nation
under the pressure of this brutal war of aggression, as if that were not
the least bit worthy of criticism. But we should understand it as a
historical process. It took us half a century in the Federal Republic to
gain the necessary critical distance from our own nationalistic past,
which was also extremely burdened by crimes against humanity. What
surprised me, however, was that there was no sign of any awareness of
this difference in mentality in the stormy identification with the
events of the war.
Quite
apart from German sensitivities, I find the historically shaped
differences between the political mentalities of the three parties
involved in the war to be revealing in any case. In Russia, the
fossilized remains of an imperial mentality have been preserved – after
the fall of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires in the First World
War. This
now meets the Ukrainian nationalism inflamed by the war, while in the
West, perhaps most strongly in the Federal Republic of Germany and most
weakly in the United Kingdom, there had at least been the hope of the
spread of that post-national spirit from which the United Nations human
rights system emerged at the end of the Second World War. This
political mentality has certainly been of great importance in the EU,
and particularly within the Schengen area, for lasting cooperation and
mutual understanding across national borders. It is simply informative
and useful to be aware of these mentalities, which – quite independently
of the clear assessment of the war under international law – result in
different perspectives on the nature, cause and progress of the
conflict.
Do
you think that the European Union would run the risk of encouraging the
return of an older style of nationalism by accepting Ukraine, which
could marginalize or at least challenge the constitutional patriotism to
which you have devoted so much of your thinking and action?
No,
it would make no difference; on the eastern flank of the EU, we already
have member states that, having acquired their state sovereignty only
after 1990, are more insistent on their rights vis-à-vis Brussels than
is sometimes good for the requirements of joint action. A historically
informed look at the various developments in mentality and interests
within the Western alliance may be more likely to explain the actual
point of my political concern. Under
the leadership of the United States, the West is keeping the war going,
so to speak – without any recognizable attempts to contain it. Of
course, the danger of escalation alone means that Western governments
are no longer “sleepwalkers”, but I fear that the conflict is
increasingly slipping out of their hands. In
any case, it is unfolding in a way that is causing a global rift, which
is completely destabilizing the situation of a world society that has,
at least economically, been more or less integrated, albeit in an
asymmetrical way.
taz FUTURZWEI N°29: Can the West disappear?
Europe
and North America have achieved a great deal and also made some
mistakes. But how then? The West could be over tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow.
On the collapse of a world order
With
Joschka Fischer, Dana Giesecke, Maja Göpel, Jürgen Habermas, Wolf
Lotter, Jörg Metelmann, Marcus Mittermeier, Ella Müller, Luisa Neubauer
and Harald Welzer, among others. Available from newsstands from June 11
■ About the new issue
Western
governments want to avoid formal involvement in the war. However, I
have been concerned from the outset about the lack of perspective; they
have tirelessly assured Ukraine of their unlimited military support up
to this point, without explaining their political goals. Officially,
they are leaving everything else to the Ukrainian government and the
luck of their soldiers. This
renunciation of declared political goals is all the more
incomprehensible as the war progresses and the geopolitical
constellations change to the detriment of the declining superpower, the
USA, and the internationally incapacitated EU. That is why, before the
start of the Munich Security Conference, I reminded readers in another
article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung2 that the West, with its military
support, on which the continuation of the war depends, has assumed a
moral responsibility. Quite
apart from the Ukrainians' will to resist, the West, with its
logistical support and weapons systems, bears a share of the
responsibility for the daily victims of the war – for every further
death, every further injury and every further destruction of hospitals
and vital infrastructure. It
would therefore not be a betrayal of Ukraine, but a normatively
required matter of course, if the USA and Europe were to persistently
explore all opportunities for a ceasefire and a compromise that would
save face for both sides.
In
the 1990s, you defended NATO intervention in the Balkans. But now you
are perhaps the most visible German skeptic of the support for Ukraine,
which is organized in particular through NATO.
I
have just explained why that is an inaccurate assumption: I have not
spoken out against effective support for Ukraine. I criticize the
renunciation of the military assistance's own perspectives and goals,
and also the denial of one's own moral responsibility for the victims of
the war.
But
have you not changed in the meantime, or has the context changed? Was
your support for the intervention in the Balkans because you saw it as a
way of creating solidarity in Europe? Are you now afraid that the
Ukraine policy could have the opposite effect? In short, why were you on
the side of the liberal humanitarian interventionists in the 1990s? And
why do you now take a position that is otherwise more associated with
hard-leftists, but also with US realists such as John Mearsheimer or the
RAND Corporation?
I
have always considered the view of political realism, which goes back
to Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau, to be wrong, that there can be no
justice between nations. This does not exclude a coincidental agreement
in individual conclusions that we draw from different premises. I
considered the Kosovo War, which was dubious in terms of international
law and which NATO waged in 1999 without a Security Council resolution
at the insistence of the US government under Bill Clinton, to be
legitimate at the time for humanitarian reasons. This was a grave
judgment, because it was the first military deployment of the Bundeswehr
since the founding of the Federal Republic. Nevertheless,
I considered it justified at the time, with similar qualifications to
those of the leading expert on international law, Christian Tomuschat,
as a humanitarian intervention. This had nothing to do with European
policy hopes. Rather, the end of the Cold War had awakened hopes of a
permanently peaceful world society. At that time, we could already look
back on a decade of humanitarian interventions – even if they had not
always been successful. At
the beginning of the decade, George Bush Senior's program had stood:
under the leadership of the then still only and undisputed superpower,
the human rights regime, which had long been established in the medium
of international law, was now to be politically enforced. There
were enough indications of the US's willingness and ability to pursue a
different policy than the one we can expect from a declining and
unpredictable superpower today – after George W. Bush's adventuresome
interventions, after Obama's political half-heartedness and after four
years of irrationality from a guy like Trump. Biden's administration,
which we are all relieved about, is not set in stone.
At
the end of the 1990s, the United States was still a superpower that had
acquired undisputed authority beyond Europe since the Second World War.
At the same time, we could look back on a wave of newly established
democratic regimes. In academia, disciplines such as peace research,
international relations and international law had experienced an
enormous upswing. The
proposals for a constitutionalization of international law, initiated
by German lawyers, were still being seriously discussed. At that time,
many lawyers saw good reasons for the success of a policy of worldwide
enforcement of human rights. It is too easy to make fun of such idealism
in retrospect. Every good contemporary historian does not write history
cynically from the disappointing result, as if hard-bitten realism had
always known better! A
historian who is aware of the contingencies of historical events will
also appreciate the disappointed but not unfounded intentions and hopes
that guided the actions of the protagonists who failed in their plans.
We often only realize why they failed in retrospect.3
If
you recall the historical context of those years, the contrast with the
current situation is obvious. A declining and internally politically
divided superpower is now primarily focused on competing with the rising
great power of China, while the EU remains fragmented and weakened from
within by right-wing populist movements. The
loudly proclaimed unity and strength of NATO is already a reaction to
the fact that the geopolitical situation has now changed drastically to
the disadvantage of the West. From a post-colonially enlightened
perspective, the West can no longer puff out its cheeks in order to win
over neutral powers such as India, Brazil and South Africa to take sides
against Russia and support Ukraine with normative appeals to a human
rights order that it itself has violated. With
the weakening of its own geopolitical influence, as recently
self-critically described by Fiona Hill,4 the West has, empirically
speaking, lost the global credibility and authority that would be
necessary to make normative arguments in favor of the political
enforcement of the peace and human rights order, as it did in the 1990s.
“I do not believe that the EU still has a future as a globally influential actor.”
Not
that our normative arguments are any less valid today than they were
then; but today we must be more concerned that the principles of the UN
do not lose the rest of their international recognition through
“powerless” political rhetoric, whether this is a sign of political
naivety or chutzpah. The now common talk of “our values” tends to
devalue reasonably justified principles.
Your contributions to German newspapers make you appear to be an advisor to the Social Democrats.
I
have never been a political consultant. Even without a party membership
card, I see myself as a left-wing social democrat; but as a public
intellectual, I have criticized the SPD all my life.
What
do you think of the German Greens? How is it that a party that was once
built on the fear of and rejection of nuclear power – and nuclear
weapons – is now the party most willing to risk a nuclear war? How can
this development be explained? Did a kind of anti-totalitarian bacillus
spread through the party after 1989?
The
Greens have the historic merit of having put the issue of climate
change on the political agenda. In Germany, however, they have since
shed their left-wing socio-political wing; their young voters come
predominantly from similar milieus as the economically liberal Free
Democrats. And as for their “anti-totalitarian” stance, I am undecided.
In Germany, this expression has rarely been used symmetrically, but
almost always only against the left.
You
have long been a skeptic of NATO and in the 1980s you found very harsh
words for the organization. Together with French President Macron, you
are calling for Europe to develop its own self-defense capabilities.
Would that also mean that Europe would free itself from something like
American tutelage? And is NATO itself perhaps the main obstacle to any
independent European defense initiative? There
are observers who believe that this has always been an important
function of NATO from the US perspective, but even if you don't want to
go that far: Was and is NATO a useful tool for Washington to extract
concessions from Europe in other areas such as trade and monetary
policy?
So
we are working our way through one misunderstanding after another. But
let's take it one step at a time: I enjoy the reputation among the
German public of having a pure pro-American attitude. That is not a
merit for my age group. I consider it a merit that I have repeatedly
worked towards the necessity of a “normative” identification with the
political tradition and culture of the West in the old Federal Republic.
NATO
may have come into play when I insisted that an “instrumental”
orientation towards the West, for reasons of military protection, which
the USA granted us during the Cold War, was not enough. Because with
that “alone”, Adenauer's Germany – with its unbroken personal continuity
of former Nazis in almost all functional areas – would not have become a
reliable democratic partner. You
cannot possibly know how often I have said and written since my 1953
critique of Heidegger that anti-Americanism in Germany has always been
linked to the most questionable German traditions.
But
if NATO also prevents the possibility of a degree of European autonomy
in world affairs, would it not be worthwhile to adopt a more Gaullist
position and consider the possibility of leaving NATO?
I
don't recall ever calling for the Federal Republic to leave NATO. And
I've never had anything to do with Gaullism. That's probably also the
wrong name for Macron's European policy, whose ambitious initiatives for
a Europe capable of political action in the world have all failed due
to the resistance of the German government, especially Chancellor Angela
Merkel and her finance ministers Schäuble and Scholz. However,
Macron's plans were probably just as little in the interest of the
American government. But all that is in the past. I do not believe that
the EU still has a future as a globally influential actor. If Macron
today, in view of the Ukraine war, intelligently reminds us of the
differences of interest that also exist between the USA and Western
Europeans, he is only following a very normal precept of political
wisdom. And
is it not rather a mistake on the part of the Europeans to neglect the
deterioration in the geopolitical situation that has occurred for the
West as a whole? And is it not rather dangerous for the long-term
support of Ukraine if we close our eyes to the unpredictability of a
partner on whom our own security still depends entirely? The
political and cultural division of American society, which has been
evident at least since Trump, the dissolution of the American party
system and the upheaval of important political institutions such as the
Supreme Court, which is obliged to be impartial, are developments that,
if we think of the role of Newt Gingrich, have been in the making since
the mid-1990s; and, I fear, they have deeper roots.
____________________
1
Habermas, Jürgen: War and Indignation. The West's Red Line Dilemma (SZ
29.04.2022).
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/the-dilemma-of-the-west-juergen-habermas-on-the-war-in-ukraine-e032431/?reduced=true
2
Habermas, Jürgen: A Plea for Negotiations (SZ 15.02.2023).
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/juergen-habermas-ukraine-sz-negotiations-e480179/?reduced=true
3 Eckel, Jan; Stahl, Daniel (Eds.): Embattled Visions. Human Rights since 1990. Göttingen 2020
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