(War-unwilling; 02-03; p.4)

Consequences and short-comings

Not regarding the question whether or not such methods are legitimisable in principle or legitimate in a special case, one may ask with the political scientist August Pradetto: 'To which extent is the hatred that is thrown against the USA in parts of the world a consequence also of the foreign policy of various of her administrations?' (Pradetto, A.: "Instrumenteller Multilateralismus und servile Rezeption: der Irak, die USA und Europa", Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (Bonn), vol. 48 (2003), issue 2 (February), pp. 163-174, here: p. 173; translation, original in German)

From a historico-philosophical point of view, "region engineering" may be seen rather as a document of heroically posing helplessness in a Nietzschean way (cf. for this the reply to Kagan by the jurist Ulrich K. Preuß: "Eher Nietzsche als Hobbes", Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (Bonn), vol. 47 (2002), issue 11 (November), p. 1357f.).

From a political scientist's perspective it is appropriate to leave a concluding statement to E. O. Czempiel. On 21 February he took part in a press conference of "resist" - an alliance of different opponents to a war in Iraq - and pointed out the following:
• politicians so far failed to differentiate between resistance, terror and political terror;
• beside the known actors of the "world of societies" that comprises more than the classic sovereign states, a new group of actors becomes increasingly visible: individual civilians that use by and large nothing but themselves as weapon;
• these new actors create a new pattern of conflict: individual civilians attack mainly other civilians that represent symbolically a state, an ethnic group or the like and they use means that cause a multitude of casualties;
• war waging in a traditional way does not provide an adequate response to such a pattern of conflict.

(end of article)