INTRODUCTION
Before reading this latest report from our friends from German Foreign Policy on Germany’s access to nuclear weapons we must recall two recent German policy papers. The first, from the highest levels of the German Armed Services (“With the European Defence and Security Policy to a European Army”) demanded access to French and British nuclear weapons – to secure the EU’s military influence and become independent of the USA. According to these German ideas armed forces which were dependent on the decisions of national parliaments would in future be of no significance. On the other hand “integrated European forces” would become indispensable and must be put at the disposal of a “European Government”.
Secondly the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (the Political Foundation of the German Christian Democrat Party) published a paper – “The Debate about the legality of preventive wars” – which proposed a general permission for “hegemonial states” (!) to attack sovereign countries. The paper even proposes that “ecologically irresponsible dam projects or unsafe nuclear power plants near national borders” could be legitimate grounds for attacking another country! The author of the report is a Director of one of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Departments, Karl Heinz Kamp who argues that the UN Charter forbidding such attacks and the primacy of sovereign nations has been “softened” in recent years. The KAF even had the nerve to point at the (totally illegal and German inspired) war against Yugoslavia as an excuse for further “preventive wars”!
Kamp demanded a “new understanding of Defence” in order to justify first strikes. Values such as “Elementary human rights” should be weighed against the prohibition of attacks on sovereign nations. Next to the potent power of European Treaties (which undermine national constitutions) and regional governments (which undermine national parliaments) “Human Rights” are the next most powerful tool in the armoury of the new imperialists!
FRANCO-GERMAN USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
BERLIN – A Franco-German strategy paper makes proposals for the common use of nuclear weaponry. Such use would be in “regions bordering the “European Space” which “present a potential threat”. Originators of the paper are the quasi official German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP) and the “French Institute for Foreign Relations” (IFRI)
The DGAP is one of the most important German foreign policy institutes, significant not least because of its Board Members who include Hans Dietrich Genscher (the Former German Foreign Minister who planned the destruction of Yugoslavia – ed) Hans Ulrich Klose (influential Social Demopcrat Party MP) Arend Oetker (industrialist) Volker Ruhe (Christian Democrat former Defence Minister) Hans Peter Schwarz (very influential political academic) and Otto Wolff von Amerongen (one of the most influential of German industrialists from Cologne).
Both the French and Germans assume that the planned cooperation in military operations (“export of stability”!) will cause strong internal conflict in Germany. The paper suggests that such resistance be tactically bypassed in order to be able to “use all the steps in the ladder of escalation… up to and including the threat of the use of nuclear military means”.
The nuclear planning (1) published at the end of February 2004 apply to the whole of the European Union within which “decision making on the basis of a German-French majority vote” should be secured. In this the participation of the United Kingdom would be sensible, so that the British could be thereby removed from US influence. (2) London would have to contribute its “most modern capacities… in the field of international crisis management” the paper asserts in its description of the British nuclear arsenal.
Within this trilateral arrangement Berlin sees a special role for itself in so far as it will “reduce French anti-Americanism but simultaneously (as for example in Afghanistan) support the USA militarily”. The new rapprochement with the USA “which is now Germany’s most important trade partner” was “of the most vital importance for Germany” (3). However there was no question of a “junior partnership” for Paris. Should Britain not participate more “flexible models” would be used to create a majority in the EU(!).
GERMANY’S BIGGER MILITARY CONTRIBUTION
Without hesitation and with no reference to the German Constitution, Berlin, the paper asserts, “has put an end to the primacy of territorial defence”. (The German Constitution still asserts the opposite but since when did the new imperial Germany care about the constraints of its post Second World War constitution!? Helmut Kohl effectively destroyed the Bundesbank and the German Constitution in the pursuit of, respectively, German Unification and European Integration – ed)
The “restructuring” of the German Armed Services into a “flexible army capable of intervening in crisis management” was under way. The “new direction” of troop deployment was towards conflicts “beyond European borders”. This interpretation is also not found in the basic principles of the German Constitution. Therefore the authors seem to expect resistance from broad sections of the population. “The sending of soldiers into war areas” they warn “will for the foreseeable future meet with strong internal conflict”. The authors seek to deal with such conflict by recommending a shared conduct of war between Berlin and Paris. Demonstrative operations “on the front line” could be left to the French Army which would be supported by a “larger German military contribution”. The covert German participation in war would be followed by more open contributions which would (as in the Afghanistan Peace Conference at the Hotel Petersberg on the Rhine) pacify German public opinion.
References are to german-foreign-policy.com
1) s. auch Bundeswehr will ,,Mitbestimmung” über Atombomben und Krieg ist Frieden
2) s. auch Das Diktat von Berlin
3) s. auch Alle Optionen
Extracts from the quasi official Strategy paper can be found under: Harmonisierung der Kriegsvorbereitungen on www.german-foreign-policy.com
