German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/154, p. 19630.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
“War is a mere continuation of politics with other means” [„Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln“]. Everyone knows this sentence of Clausewitz. In traditional international law, a war therefore ends with a political result, a conclusion of peace. If however one party to a war excludes the other from the civilized world with a judgement of unworthiness [Unwerturteil], a conclusion of peace becomes impossible.
Since 1648, as the peace treaty of Münster and Osnabrück ended the ideological war between protestants and catholics, the rule applies that all subject to international law are alike in the sense of a like ability to speak. Even in the times of the Cold War, there were talks between both sides. The expression that one is not allowed to let the line of communication to rupture, belonged until recently to the standard vocabulary of German foreign policy.
Kurt Abraham (CDU/CSU): Who then has broken the line?
Why, ladies and
gentlemen, does this no longer apply to Russia?
It was a political failure that Russian representatives were uninvited at the Munich Security Conference, a conference the motto of which is “Peace through Dialogue“ – not through weapons deliveries.
Realpolitik, ladies and gentlemen, is the art of the possible. The possible is often not to be had without painful compromise. Values-led foreign policy on the other hand, as we lately manage it, does not know the lesser evil. When values-led foreign policy leads to that communication and negotiations stop, or are simply just not undertaken, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik. And when the values-led foreign policy leads to that the war will then be continued when the war aims are not achieved, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the central distinction between Realpolitik and that which we meanwhile have come to know as “values-led foreign policy“.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): It is a lie when you assert that there were no talks. You know that!
Values societies feel themselves obligated to fight against unworthiness [Unwert]. With a representative of unworthiness, values societies conduct no negotiations. The opponent of war becomes an absolute enemy. His interests are criminal.
Marcus Faber (FDP): That is called war crimes!
The enemy must be annihilated. That unfortunately leads, with a known consistency, to that the war escalates.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is
your vocabulary, not ours!
Ladies and gentlemen, Putin conducts a war which can be held to be unjust and wrong,
Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): “can be held”!
or needs be. So as to end it, however, nothing is served by assuming his criteria; but on the contrary, by again recalling Münster and Osnabrück and by overcoming the Western inability of speech [Sprachlosigkeit]. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, for that is required a Metternich at the Vienna Congress or a Kissinger in Peking, instead of a presenter of war. It’s too bad that no one in Munich wanted to undertake that role. Therefore, we will also have no peace if we so continue.
I am grateful.
[trans: tem]
