Will the
German Greens Now In Government Stand By Their
Beliefs?
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON--We would like to know what kind of stuff these
German Greens are made of. The Kosovo to bomb or not to bomb
decision arrived on their platter as soon as the election
results were counted. Richard Holbrooke may now have got
them off the hook as much as he did Slobodan Milosevic, but
the issue on the use of the deployment of NATO force, and
its ancillary decision, to use it without an explicit UN
mandate, is very likely to return during their term of
office.
Supposedly pacifist inclined by early conviction,
definitely pro United Nations and wary of enforcement or
peacekeeping actions done in its name without a Security
Council vote, the Greens are bound to be difficult
bedfellows for western governments, who have a tendency to
bend the rules on military intervention. The Kosovo decision
had all the makings of an early clash between principle and
realpolitik. The likely next foreign minister of Germany,
Green leader Joschka Fischer was being cajoled and pushed
the last week to fall into line with majority opinion within
NATO and give the green light for the go-ahead to bomb if
Milosevic didn't climb down.
Those who voted Green in the recent German elections,
hoping for application of the principles under which the
Greens campaigned, should read Nancy Mitford's "Voltaire in
Love". She describes at length the vicissitudes of the man
of letters' friendship with King Frederick the Great of
Prussia. While crown prince, Frederick, encouraged by
Voltaire, wrote a tract denouncing Machiavelli,
demonstrating that it is possible to conceive of a European
balance of power without armies and recourse to war. But on
inheriting the throne Frederick ditched his beliefs and
informed his friend that since everyone else was doing it he
was going to enjoy the opportunities and the spoils of war
as much as the next king. While he held true to his old
commitments to abolish censorship and torture, at the game
of war he was as violent and as unscrupulous as
Machiavelli's prince.
The Greens are at a similar crossroads. Will they make
love or war? Will they be in power or only in office? All
the old cliches can be rolled out, yet they are nevertheless
apposite. Do the Greens in reality have the chance to put
into effect the principles they spent the best part of their
lives fighting for or, now they see the kingdom spread
beneath them, are they embarrassed about what they stood
for, or simply afraid of the consequences if they gave them
effect?
One can see the subtle influences at work. The nice words
(he is "gifted") said about Mr Fischer by departing
Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The sympathetic but in the end
doubtless tough chidings from Bill Clinton during his recent
visit to Washington at the side of chancellor-elect Gerhard
Shroder. We can probably assume that Clinton pointed to his
days in Oxford when he too was a war protestor but how he
had to quietly put that to one side if he wanted to
accomplish anything in the real political world.
Lost on Clinton, apparently, is the irony that four of
the most senior positions in the four most powerful western
governments are occupied, or very soon will be, by ex
anti-war protestors and, if they pulled together, rather
than tacitly trying to subvert each other's courage, they
might be able to march against establishment opinion with
some effect. Instead, acting as lone individuals, they go
along to get along. They tell themselves that they have done
this or done that, which their conventional predecessors
never would.
We can see this so clearly with Clinton. I'd make a guess
that Clinton tells himself, "I'll never press the button".
Or that he wallows in the fact--which was leaked to the
press--that he stayed up to the small hours of the morning
to make sure that the cruise missiles targetted on a
Sudanese factory were only fired when he was personally
convinced that every worker was back at home, safely tucked
up in bed. And he is obviously proud too, of how on his
African trip earlier this year, he asked forgiveness from
the people of Rwanda for failing them in their hour of need,
when the U.S. stymied efforts by UN peacekeepers to come to
the rescue as they confronted the genocidal killings of the
Hutu. Who else in high office in twentieth century politics
would have been so concerned or so apologetic, he probably
tells himself.
All this is predicated on the belief that the
establishment and powerful ideological lobbies would not
tolerate much more. Clinton is at least half convinced that
there is a right wing plot to topple him. He has always been
careful not to alienate the Pentagon brass, particularly
after his early failed effort to allow gays in the military
to come out of the closet. He would not even get behind the
campaign to ban land-mines, despite a public opinion
softened by the death of Princess Diana. Nor would he push
for what he had said he wanted, an International Criminal
Court, even though America's closest allies in NATO all
voted for it.
This week it was almost the turn of the German Greens to
take the high ground--or the low ground--on a decision of
momentous proportions, whether to bomb the heartland of a
fellow European country. Fortunately for them the threat of
force was, it appears, enough to persuade Milosevic to
compromise. (NATO was lucky that its bluff was mightier than
its sword--all the evidence of the twentieth century
suggests that aeriel bombing works to consolidate the power
of whoever rules beneath.) So Mr Fischer is off the hook of
his mighty dilemma this time. And next?
October 14,
1998, LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
|