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Sarkophilia and the Dolchstoss Charge Against Germany

We stand at a high point in French postwar diplomacy and a nadir in German. There were strong arguments on either side of a Libyan intervention, but with a massacre looming in Benghazi, Germany had to stand with its allies [bold mine-DL]. Angela Merkel has proved herself more a maneuverer than a leader. Germany often […]

We stand at a high point in French postwar diplomacy and a nadir in German. There were strong arguments on either side of a Libyan intervention, but with a massacre looming in Benghazi, Germany had to stand with its allies [bold mine-DL]. Angela Merkel has proved herself more a maneuverer than a leader. Germany often conveys the sense that it now resents the agents of its postwar rehabilitation — the European Union and NATO. ~Roger Cohen

One of the more strange things in the Libya debate has been the fairly frequent pro-war recourse to the Dolchstoss accusation against the German government for its failure to endorse starting an international war. I’m not the one introducing the pernicious post-WWI language of betrayal that German nationalists leveled at their government after 1918. I believe it was Timothy Garton Ash, a columnist for The Guardian, who deserves that dubious honor. Early on in the Libyan war, Ash was pouting like a new Donald Rumsfeld:

But how could Germany not support a UN resolution backed by its principal European partners, the United States and the Arab League? Worse still, Westerwelle recently cited doubts expressed about the extent of the military action by the Arab League to defend the German abstention: “We calculated the risk. If we see that three days after this intervention began, the Arab League already criticises [it], I think we had good reasons.” While French and British pilots risk their lives in action, the German foreign minister is virtually encouraging the Arab League to make further criticism. A word that springs unbidden to my mind is Dolchstoss (stab in the back).

Of course, it doesn’t spring unbidden. Ash bids it come forth. It’s the sort of loaded, despicable term that hard-liners and authoritarians have deployed against the “enemy within” for a long time. It is the language that warmongers use to accuse people who take a different, entirely reasonable position on foreign policy of being treacherous villains. Ash thought of the word, typed it, and then published it. How could Germany not support a resolution that authorized an attack on Libya? Perhaps the German government concluded that attacking Libya was a mistake, or that it would make things worse, or that Germany did not want to be associated with starting a war under these circumstances. The idea that Germany is obliged to support the folly of its allies no matter what it is remains as foolish and insidious as it was in 2002.

Coming back to Cohen, I am impressed by how quickly liberal writers can adapt all the standard tropes of Iraq war supporters when it comes to Libya. We have heard something like this before: regardless of the substance of the policy, it is the duty of allies to fall in line blindly behind ruinous policies that they correctly see as mistakes. Strong arguments on both sides of a question do not permit the possibility of strong political differences over a particular issue. The governments that favor non-intervention or some approach other than the use of force must yield to their more aggressive allies for the sake of good relations, but this demand for reciprocity and solidarity doesn’t apply to the aggressive allies. “Failure” to fall in line like mindless drones is oddly enough taken as evidence of a “failure” of leadership, whereas eagerness to jump on a pro-war bandwagon is proof of wisdom and virtue. One small problem with all of this is that it is utter nonsense.

Allied governments are not required to endorse their allies’ decisions automatically, nor should they be expected to do so. This is especially true when it is an issue that does not directly concern the security interests of any allied government. If France faced a threat to its security, and Germany was indifferent, that might be the time to complain about disloyalty. When France is keen to pick a fight with a government that has done nothing to France, Germany has no obligations to support France in its warmongering. Despite very similar rhetoric praising the leadership of the likes of Aznar and Kwasniewski and deploring the cynicism of Chirac and Schroeder, we should remember that the governments that sided with the U.S. and Britain in 2002-03 hardly covered themselves in glory. For the most part, they came to regret their involvement, and tried to minimize their role as soon as they could.

Does French support for the Libyan war really mark a “high point in French postwar diplomacy”? One would have to have an extremely poor opinion of postwar French diplomacy to think that the Libyan misadventure has been a high point. One would also need to be measuring these things very strangely. Arguably, French involvement in Libya is as dim-witted as French involvement in Suez, but at least in Suez France was conceivably fighting for something that mattered to French interests. Westerwelle is in no danger of presiding over a golden age of German diplomacy, but he has certainly been better than the awful Joschka Fischer, who was overseeing German foreign affairs during the last unnecessary NATO bombing campaign. As far as I can see, the German government’s “flop” is a result of heeding the will of its electorate, which is what one supposes democratic governments are supposed to do on matters as important as war. Sarkozy’s adventurism is a belated, desperate gamble to demonstrate firm leadership. He’s acting like Urquhart in Cyprus, and gullible Europeans and Americans are eating it up.

Cohen claims that “Germany has entered a new era of ambivalence and nationalist calculation.” Ambivalence about what? Using military means to kill foreigners that have done them no harm? One should hope that they are simply opposed to this rather than ambivalent. What is the nationalist calculation here? That German interests are served by doing something other than starting wars? One would think that this is the sort of “nationalist calculation” that we should want the largest, wealthiest European state to make. Does Cohen believe that there was no “nationalist calculation” in the French decision to try to change the subject from Tunisia by attacking Libya?

Cohen praises Sarkozy for “intuiting” three things:

First, the democratization of the Arab world is the most important European strategic challenge of the decade. Second, it was time “to take the training wheels off,” in the words of Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund, and have Europe rather than an overextended America lead in Libya. Third, the U.N. cannot always be an umbrella that folds when it rains. If its “responsibility to protect” means anything, it must be when an Arab tyrant promises to slaughter his people.

Yes, Sarkozy “intuited” the first one right after one of France’s closest cronies was ousted despite Paris’ wishes to the contrary. His response to this strategic challenge has been to start a war in the one country where a popular uprising has turned into a civil war. Even if Sarkozy’s general intuition was correct, his reaction has been clumsy and heavy-handed. By taking the “training wheels off,” Cohen means that France pushed to start a war against Libya rather than waiting for the U.S. to start it.

Finally, the “responsibility to protect” has become one of the most abused, poorly-understood concepts in this debate. The “responsibility to protect” takes it as a given that non-intervention is the norm:

4.11 The starting point, here as elsewhere, should be the principle of non-intervention. This is the norm from which any departure has to be justified. All members of the United Nations have an interest in maintaining an order of sovereign, self-reliant, responsible, yet interdependent states. In most situations, this interest is best served if all states, large and small, abstain from intervening or interfering in the domestic affairs of other states. Most internal political or civil disagreements, even conflicts, within states do not require coercive intervention by external powers. The non-interference rule not only protects states and governments: it also protects peoples and cultures, enabling societies to maintain the religious, ethnic, and civilizational differences that they cherish.

4.12 The norm of non-intervention is the equivalent in international affairs of the Hippocratic principle – first do no harm. Intervention in the domestic affairs of states is often harmful. It can destabilize the order of states, while fanning ethnic or civil strife. When internal forces seeking to oppose a state believe that they can generate outside support by mounting campaigns of violence, the internal order of all states is potentially compromised. The rule against intervention in internal affairs encourages states to solve their own internal problems and prevent these from spilling over into a threat to international peace and security.

Part of what the “responsibility to protect” means is that intervention is justified only in the most extreme and exceptional cases. The reality is that Libya didn’t and doesn’t come close to being one of those. Sarkozy wanted to attack Libya anyway, which should make supporters of the “responsibility to protect” very skeptical of the Libyan war, and it should make all of us even more skeptical of pro-Sarkozy liberals who are doing their best impression of conservative admirers of Tony Blair.

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