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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (164798)	3/18/2003 6:55:56 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573502

See the weasels squirm: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understanding German Military Intervention: "Yes" to Yugoslavia, "No" to Iraq NATO strikes in Belgrade: Germany's first military deployment since World War II Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has ruled out German involvement in an Iraq war. Four years ago, however, the Bundeswehr took part in NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia without a U.N. mandate. Why then, but not now? Chancellor Schröder somberly addressed the nation on March 24, 1999, shortly after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. Schröder announced that his government had made a difficult decision: "After all, this is the first time since World War II that German soldiers have been deployed in combat," he said. "We are not waging a war, but we must bring about a peaceful solution in Kosovo, even if that requires military force," " Schröder explained that this was the reason why the German government had decided to take part in the military campaign against Slobodan Milosevic's regime. Today, the same governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens has rejected involvement in a war against Iraq, arguing that military intervention would be a threat to the Middle East. In 1999, they used the opposite argument, maintaining that the Balkans was in danger without military intervention. Explaining the contradiction "With Kosovo we had a situation of on-going danger," Social Democratic Party foreign policy expert Ute Zapf said in an interview. "It was about ethnic expulsion and impending genocide. Now in Iraq we have a potential threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction but no immediate danger." Zapf insisted the problems were very different. Germany's opposition parties see the issue differently. According to Christoph Schmidt, defense spokesman for the Christian Democrat - Christian Socialist parliamentary group, the governing coalition committed itself to its "no" at an early stage in order to get re-elected in autumn 2002. Now, Schmidt says, Chancellor Schröder can no longer take back his words. "July 2002 was the point of departure. Then Schröder tried to take advantage of the mood against military intervention (in Iraq) for the election campaign. The price was that other foreign policy options were abandoned. And now, getting out of that without losing face is hard." Political perspectives Günther Joetze believes that neither of these explanations is sufficient. The former president of the Federal Academy for Security Policy has written a book about the German role in the Kosovo conflict and is working on one about Iraq. Joetze ascribes the German government's differing attitudes toward Kosovo and Iraq to numerous motives. Above all, says Joetze, the government sees different political perspectives for the two crisis regions. In Kosovo, the international community was aiming to enforce humanitarian and democratic standards, which cannot be transmitted to Iraq as easily, Joetze maintains. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein is not considered the only rogue in the region, which is why the government does not believe that a war will improve the situation at all. In the case of Kosovo, Joetze says, Germany's partners in NATO expected that the Bundeswehr would take part in military operations. The government had no choice but to say "yes," Joetze maintains. Plus, the government had only be in office for a short time and had to prove itself regarding foreign policy. "The Social Democrats didn't want to start their term in government by standing down from the unity of the coalition at the time," Joetze insists. "Whereas, for Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party, the question was a different one. It was made clear to him (as the junior partner in the governing coalition) that he could only remain foreign minister and a governing partner if he toed the same line." International peacekeeping Today Joetze sees the government in a different situation not just because it has been in office for four years, but also because Germany is now the second biggest contributor of troops to international peacekeeping operations. "The defense minister and the chancellor say 'we continually prove ourselves to be reliable partners. We are prepared to make our contribution. We can afford to have another opinion on one particular question.'" "(In 1999) the only international operation the Bundeswehr was involved in was the air campaign against Yugoslavia. There weren't any German troops in Macedonia and Afghanistan yet. The issue was the first NATO troop deployment." Besides, the mood among the population has changed in the past four years. Then, most Germans were in favor of a war against the Milosevic regime. Today, the majority rejects a war against Saddam Hussein. Joetze doesn't find the allegation that Chancellor Schröder made the Iraq crisis an issue during the election campaign and thus won the general election reprehensible. On the contrary, democracy means that elected representatives listen to the voice of the people -- then as now. dw-world.de