Arnon Grunberg

Partisanship

Impact

In April the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas defended the German chancellor Scholz in a wordy but nuanced essay.
Scholz at that time had I would say first and foremost a public relations problem, he acted with prudence at a time that many people, probably also a majority in Germany wanted a bit more clarity, steadfastness.

Habermas wrote: ‘77 years after the end of the Second World War and 33 years after the end of a fragile peace maintained only through a delicate balance of terror, disturbing images of war have returned – right outside our door and unleashed arbitrarily by Russia. The medial presence of this war is holding sway over our daily lives in an unprecedented manner. A Ukrainian president who is fully aware of the power of images continues to ably press his striking messages while the new scenes of raw destruction and shocking suffering produced each day are finding a self-reinforcing echo in the social media channels of the West. The novelty of the broadcasting and calculated publicity of those unpredictable war events, to be sure, may exert a greater impact on the elderly among us than on the younger ones who possess greater media fluency.’

(…)

‘Despite this unanimous partisanship, in Germany a strident, media-fueled debate has erupted over the type and extent of military assistance the country should supply to Ukraine. The demands for assistance coming from a blamelessly attacked Ukraine, which has unhesitatingly transformed the political misjudgments and erroneous policies of former German governments into moral accusations, are just as understandable as the emotions, empathy and need to help we feel are self-evident.
nd yet I am bothered by the self-assurance with which the morally indignant accusers in Germany are going after an introspective and reserved federal government. In an interview with the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, the German chancellor summed up his policy in a single sentence: “We are confronting terrible suffering that Russia is inflicting upon Ukraine using all means possible, without creating an uncontrollable escalation that will cause immeasurable suffering across the entire continent, perhaps even throughout the world.” With the West having made the decision to not intervene in this conflict as a belligerent, there is a risk threshold that precludes an unrestrained commitment to the armament of Ukraine. This risk threshold has once again been thrust into the spotlight by the solidarity displayed by the German government with our allies at this week’s meeting at the Ramstein Air Base, and by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s renewed threat of a potential nuclear escalation.’

(…)

‘On the one hand, we have learned from the Cold War that a war against a nuclear power can no longer be “won” in any reasonable sense, at least not with the means of military force within the limited timeline of a hot conflict. The nuclear threat means that the threatened side, whether it possesses nuclear weapons or not, cannot end the unbearable destruction caused by military force with victory, but at best only with a compromise that allows both sides to save face. Neither side is forced to accept a defeat or leave the battlefield as a “loser.” The cease-fire negotiations now taking place concurrently with the fighting are an expression of this insight; they enable for the time being the reciprocal view of the enemy as a possible negotiating partner.’

(…)

‘On the other hand, the West – as Russia well knows – cannot allow itself to be continually blackmailed. Were the allies to simply leave Ukraine to its fate, it wouldn’t just be a scandal from a political-moral perspective, it would also be counter to the West’s interests. Because then, it would have to be prepared to play the same game of Russian roulette in Georgia or Moldova – and who might be next on the list? To be sure, the asymmetry that could drive the West into a dead end in the long term only endures for as long as it continues to shy away – for good reason – from the risk of a nuclear war. Consequently, the argument which holds that Putin should not be driven into a corner because he is capable of anything is countered by the contention that precisely this “policy of fear” gives the opponent a free hand to continue escalating the conflict step by step, as Ralf Fücks recently pointed out in this newspaper. This argument, too, of course, merely confirms the nature of a situation that is essentially unpredictable. Because as long as we are determined for good reason to avoid becoming a party to this war to protect Ukraine, the type and extent of military support we offer must also be qualified in view of such considerations. Those who object to pursuing a “policy of fear” in a rationally justifiable manner already find themselves within the scope of argumentation of the kind that Chancellor Olaf Scholz correctly insists on – namely that of careful consideration in a politically responsible and factually comprehensive fashion.’

(…)

‘In the interest of disentangling the issues involved, I am going to leave aside the dispute over the policy of détente – a policy which proved successful up to and even beyond the end of the Soviet Union – and its continued and, from today’s perspective, clearly erroneous application to an increasingly unpredictable Putin. I am also going to leave aside the errors made by successive German governments, which bowed to economic pressures and made the country dependent on cheap energy imports from Russia. Historians will one day pass their judgment on the short memories displayed in today’s controversies.’

(…)

‘It is reminiscent of Germany’s newly iconic foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who, immediately after the war began, gave authentic expression to the shock felt by many using credible gestures and admissions of dismay. Not that such expressions don’t represent the compassion and impulse to help that are widespread in our population, but she also lent a convincing voice to the spontaneous identification with the vehemently moralizing insistence of a Ukrainian leadership that is determined to win the war. And with that, we have arrived at the core of the conflict between those who have rushed emphatically to make their own the perspective of a nation fighting for its freedom, liberty and life – and those who have learned a different lesson from the experiences of the Cold War and have developed a different mentality. The one group can only view war through the lens of victory or defeat, while the others know that a war against a nuclear power cannot be “won” in the traditional sense of the word.’

(…)

‘This post-heroic mentality was able to develop in Western Europe – if I might make a broad generalization – during the second half of the 20th century under the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States. Given the devastation made possible by nuclear war, a view took hold among the political elite and the overwhelming majority of the population that international conflicts can essentially only be solved through diplomacy and sanctions – and that, should a military conflict break out, the war must be settled as quickly as possible since the difficult-to-calculate threat of the deployment of weapons of mass destruction means that victory or defeat in the classical sense are no longer potential outcomes. Or, as the German author Alexander Kluge has put it: “War can only teach us to make peace.” This view doesn’t necessarily translate into principled pacifism, meaning peace at any price. The focus on ending destruction, human suffering and de-civilization as quickly as possible is not synonymous with demands to sacrifice a politically free existence on the altar of mere survival. Skepticism of military violence hits a prima facie limit when it comes to the price exacted by a life stifled by authoritarianism – a life in which even the awareness of the contradiction between forced normality and self-determination would vanish.’

(…)

‘Not that the war criminal Putin doesn’t deserve to be brought before such a court, but he still holds a veto in the United Nations Security Council and can continue to threaten his opponents with nuclear war. An end of the war, or at least a cease-fire, must still be negotiated with him. I see no convincing justification for demands for a policy which – despite the excruciating, increasingly unbearable suffering of the victims – would de facto put at risk the well-founded decision to avoid participation in this war.’

(…)

‘It is, after all, no coincidence that the authors of the “watershed” are those leftists and liberals who –faced with a drastically altered international constellation and in the shadow of trans-Atlantic uncertainties – want to take serious action in response to an overdue insight: namely that a European Union unwilling to see its social and political way of life destabilized from the outside or undermined from within will only gain the necessary political agency if it can also stand on its own two feet militarily. The re-election of Emmanuel Macron in France provides a reprieve. But we first must find a way out of our dilemma. This hope is reflected in the cautious formulation of the goal that Ukraine "must not lose" this war.’

Read the article here.

Once again, it’s wordy, but it’s nuanced.
You can consider Putin a war criminal without idealizing Ukraine.

Now, Timothy Snyder has answered Habermas.
Here’s Snyder in FAZ:

‘Jürgen Habermas, regarded as the greatest political philosopher in Europe, has written a text on its major contemporary crisis, the war in Ukraine. His thesis is that history recommends German „Besonnenheit,“ which in practice has meant little German action but much German talk during the first four months of the most important conflict in Europe since 1945.
Though Habermas makes his case on the basis of historical argument, it is striking that he has nothing to say about the Second World War. This is the conventional starting point for discussions of German responsibility, and it is more than usually applicable to Ukraine. Hitler portrayed the Ukrainians as a colonial people, and sought to displace them, starve them, and enslave them. He intended to use Ukrainian food supplies to make of Germany an autarkic world empire. Vladimir Putin has raised Hitlerian themes as justification for his war of destruction: the Ukrainians have no historical consciousness, no nationality of their own, no elite. Like Hitler, and for that matter like Stalin, he seeks to use Ukrainian foodstuffs as a weapon. But a reader of Habermas were not asked to consider these resemblances, nor to inquire whether as Germans they might bear responsibility towards Ukraine: a country where Germans killed millions of people, not so very long ago.’

(…)

‘Ukrainians have concluded, with reason, that they are fighting for national survival. Habermas alludes to the Ukrainian predicament in remarks about heroic and post-heroic generations, but this German way of casting the problem nudges the reader away from Ukrainian experience, and perhaps from the most important issues. I think of Roman Ratushnyi, who was killed in combat, just short of his twenty-fifth birthday. Roman was a sixteen-year-old civic activist in 2013, when he protested in favor of a closer association of Ukraine with the European Union. He then became known in Kyiv as an ecological activist, defending green spaces from dubious plans for development. His life and his activity were oriented towards the future.’

(…)

‘Putin fights his war in the name of a mythical past: referring to the tenth century (a baptism by a Viking) or the eighteenth century (Peter the Great) as justifications for a war of aggression in the twenty-first century. The Ukrainian generation now in power is the first one formed after 1991, and its courage resides in the defense of what has been built up sense then, and in the defense of a vision of a normal European future. The men and women fighting the war, some young and some less so, connect national survival, understandably enough, with normal life and a future in the European Union. They risk and lose their lived for this. That can certainly be seen as heroic, but perhaps in a way we can understand. It has little to do with debates in German about heroism, which in a German context is contaminated by Nazi language. But is it really the German linguistic context that should guide German judgements about other peoples? But when Habermas dwells only within the problems this raises between his and younger generations, he eludes any confrontation with the rationality of Ukrainian resistance.’

(…)

‘The Ukrainian president, who goes unnamed in Habermas's essay, figures only as someone „who understands the power of images.“ From such a description the reader would never guess that Zelensky had made some rather telling philosophical arguments during this war about the relationship between self-deception and war. It is a curiously limited description of Volodymyr Zelensky's talents, one that falls flat amidst a reality that is far more horrible than the images that actually reach Germans. Habermas does grant that behind what he complacently calls the „familiar scenography“ there is real human harm. Yet we are left with a German philosopher describing a Jewish president who is at the center of world history as a kind of Hollywood producer. This is an uncomfortable place for the discussion of Zelensky to end, but end there it does.’

(…)

‘A student of discourse might consider that problem. Habermas instead repeats and endorses Russian propaganda about the risk of nuclear war, while ignoring the basic structure of Russian political discourse. He seems to believe in a scenario in which Putin could be somehow cornered by his own war, and be forced to escalate. We know that a humiliating defeat for Russia will not lead to nuclear war. Russia was defeated and indeed humiliated in the Battle of Kyiv, but did not use nuclear weapons and did not escalate.’

(…)

‘The basis of mistaken reasoning, he defends a German foreign policy based upon that proposition. In helping to move part of German public opinion towards the proposition that Ukraine cannot win the war, and in thereby helping to delay the delivery of the necessary weapons, Habermas has made Ukraine's defeat more likely. And in that way, he has made the collapse of Europe more likely. The damage does not end there. In and of itself, Habermas's (incorrect) argument about the power of nuclear weapons in international affairs is highly dangerous. If it is believed, it tends to make an actual nuclear war more likely. Treating nuclear weapons as a kind of sacred object that makes its owner invincible amounts to propaganda for nuclear proliferation.’

(…)

‘Habermas does not acknowledge 1989, 1990, of 1991 as important turning points. In Habermas's portrayal, Germany did not do much of anything these last thirty years. Habermas mentions in passing the „failure of German governments“ to avoid dependence on Russian oil and gas. But that was an active German choice, when plenty of others were available. The decision to abandon nuclear energy was baffling; the decision to build NordSteam 2 after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 was scandalous. These German choices, had disastrous consequences. The choice to depend upon Russian energy exports also compromised German political discussion. For all of his attention to discourse, Habermas seems not to have noticed this. German policy choices of the twenty-first century mean that, even today, Germany is financing Russia's war of destruction.’

Read the article here.

The suggestion that Habermas is antisemitic is a bit cheap.

I would not have descrived Zelensky as somebody who knows the power of images – who doesn’t know the power of images nowadays – but that doesn’t mean that Habermas suggested that Zelensky, the Jew is a Hollywood producer.

Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, India, they all bought Russian oil. And some of these countries are still buying it.

Snyder is first and foremost criticizing Merkel without mentioning her name.

The decision to abandon nuclear energy after the disaster in Japan was and still is popular in Germany.
Merkel had to make this step, or risk being eaten alive by the Greens.

And Habermas acknowledges the mistake:

‘I am also going to leave aside the errors made by successive German governments, which bowed to economic pressures and made the country dependent on cheap energy imports from Russia. Historians will one day pass their judgment on the short memories displayed in today’s controversies.’

But for Snyder it is not enough.

What should Habermas have said? Buying Russian oil was worse than the Holocaust?

Snyder is convinced that Putin will never use nuclear weapons:

‘We know that a humiliating defeat for Russia will not lead to nuclear war. Russia was defeated and indeed humiliated in the Battle of Kyiv, but did not use nuclear weapons and did not escalate,’ Snyder writes.

So because Putin didn’t escalate than he will never escalate?

And even if Putin will never use nuclear weapon, is there any Western country willing to send its soldiers to Ukraine to die for Kiev?

Neither in Afghanistan in 1980 nor in Vietnam in the 60s the USSR and the USA were directly fighting each other. These were proxy wars. In this case, if the NATO would officially and not officiously send soldiers to Ukraine (there are NATO soldiers in Ukraine but not officially) Russian and American soldiers could face each other directly.

Snyder says that Germany has special responsibilities towards Ukraine because of World War II.
Purely based on the number of victims Germany has also a special responsibility towards Russia because of World War II.

According to its politicians, according to various presidents Germany has an interest (i.e. moral obligation) when it comes to the survival of Israel and Germany strives - because of World War II – for a federal Europe.

It’s absurd to say that because of Hitler Germany should now sent more weapons to Ukraine. One could equally claim that because of Hitler Germany should sent money to the poorer parts of France, so that the French electorate might be less smitten with Le Pen.

Can Putin’s Russia be compared to the USSR? Snyder is making the point that it cannot. Habermas sees continuity. I would say that since the USSR is also Stalin, the continuity is more obvious than we might think.

Whether Ukraine can win the war is dependent on the definition of winning. Ukraine will not march towards Moscow and make Putin a POW, so much is certain. No foreign country will occupy Moscow in order to get rid of Putin.

Snyder might be upset about Biden’s prudence but to blame Germany for prudence of Biden is also absurd. Yes, I know the rhetoric of Biden was a bit more hawkish than the rhetoric of Scholz, but it’s deeds that count more.

It’s not clear what Snyder demands of Germany. More weapons? Less Habermas?

It’s not clear what he demands of Habermas either. The acknowledgement that post-heroism is a German post-45 privilege and that the Ukrainians are extremely heroic is rather silly.
But as always: the enemy consists of cowards, our side produced only heroes. See also under: George W. Bush after 9/11.

Snyder’s attack is disingenuous. He doesn’t seem to care for specific German sensitivities, he is not interested in the behavior and the deeds of other NATO countries, he needs a scape goat. Scholz and Habermas are a delightful scapegoat.

Yes, Habermas suggested that the war criminal Putin might turn out to be a negotiating partner. That’s what I have suggested as well.

It might be not so nice and comforting. But that’s the reality. If Roosevelt could sit down with Stalin Biden can sit down with Putin.

The moral clarity that Snyder insists on is beautiful on stage, but it has nothing to do with the realities of the world. The enemies of Putin, and aren’t we all enemies of Putin, might feel slightly empowered after reading Snyder, ah, he stands up against the brutal war criminal. That’s all.

Snyder wants moral clarity, the consequences of the moral clarity, i.e. the realities of power are of little interest to him.

Snyder is to the war in Ukraine what the neocons were to Iraq.
Disappointed leftists are often seduced by the idea of heroism, post heroism is unbearable for them. They want other people to die so they can feel good.

And Habermas said: Ukraine must not lose this war, Putin must not win this war.

But to make this happen you must have a strategy – the appearance of moral clarity and a winning strategy are two very different things.

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