Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic
Throughout his controversial career in German politics, Joschka Fisher has gained reputation as a shrewd and visionary politician. Paul Hockenos begins to show how the grassroots movements that became the German Greens challenged in his stands and change thee country’s status quo making the postwar Germany more democratic and liberal.
Joschka Fischer made realistic and pragmatic decisions that led him to come out against many violence and wars like the guerilla violence, then standing up against street fighting and advocating the electoral politics of West Germany. His pacifist party supported Germany’s participation on NATO-led war against Yugoslavia when he was the Green foreign minister in the republic. This had enormous implications for the Green’s party Federal republicans and Balkans. This was seen since as Yugoslavia collapsed, the German government sided with the Croats and Slovenes to curb the pressure from the bullying tactics of the president of Yugoslavia who is a Serbian, hence they moved to celebrate themselves from Serbia dominated Yugoslavia.
Until 1990s, the debate on Germany over the slaughter of Bosnia, not only did the constitution of Germany prohibit Blunderer participation in non-defensive military operations but also not a respected voice in the country argued that Germany armed forces be sent to foreign conflict zones and therefore German forces could not participate anymore in the missions of wars out of NATO areas. In 1990 however, in the aftermath of 1990-91 Gulf war, several Bundeswehr minesweepers trolled the Persian inspectors in the republic of Iraq. 30 German pilots flying Bunderswehr helicopter aided the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. After all this events and scenarios, the Greens accused the government of abating the Washington’s imperialist agenda of violating the Basic Laws. The Greens Left-wing democrats cited the same rationale with which they would later veto Germany involvement in Balkan missions.
As the atrocities in Bosnia mounted to its peak despite round after round of international mediation, a handful of dissident Green party officials led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit demanded tougher international measures to halt the Serb onslaught-including military force. Joschka Fischer as the environment minister at that moment in federal state of Hesse responded to Daniel Cohn-Bendits challenge. Swayed by the interventions but not yet convinced, he struck a middle of a course. He argued that army interventions in Bosnia, though not to be ruled out would at the time in 1993, only throw a fuel on the fire and cause escalate (pp 236). He also maintained there could be no German military presence in territories that the Wehmacht had occupied during World War II, such as Balkans (pp 236).
The greens then appeared from then henceforth to unlikely be found at the helm of German foreign policy. The Fischer’s critics who now had partly be members from his own party said that he forced the party’s hand to disavow its antimilitarists roots in order to prep it for prime time, a nationwide prime time of red-green coalition with himself as a foreign minister (pp 243).
The Srebrenica massacre that happened in the year 1995 which saw about 8000 people loose their lives jolted Germans including the environment minister at that time, Joschka Fischer, therefore they abandoned their objections to interventions on behalf of Bosnia Muslims who where being brutally assassinated and killed. Instead the Germans began to rethink on the roles in which Europe as a continent and also Germany as a nation should play in the world in ending the wars and interventions among rival countries and parties.
Fischer himself exhorted his party members, the greens to wake up to the reality and understand that the international policy had failed to work in the Bosnia republic. In his reversed stand answer of a letter from the Green’s officials, he asks the “Are we pacifists prepared to accept the triumph of brutal naked violence in Bosnia? What should we do when all existing non military means of stopping military violence have been exhausted?” (pp 247). He said that he can’t stand watching as a whole population in Bosnia is ethnically cleansed and Muslim men in the country are herded into concentration camps and slaughtered brutally.
Greens antiwar faction formed within the party claiming that Kosovo interventions was a ploy to create a new justification for NATO as global policemen which was contrary to Fischer whose main idea was to draw a plan that can combat the war and conventions be made in a way that is so fast. He came up with his plan B option that set the divisive Rambouillet document to one side that pulled the UN and Russia troops to peace keeping.
In 1999, he tried to convince his party that the military intervention in Kosovo was the only way to stop a second Bosnia. This is what the Green party members did not agree on since in his speech in 1976, he pleaded with West Germany to renounce violence. Fortunately the war came to an end in 1999 and Kosovo showed that Germany was in the position to lead when it has other allies and supporters behind it.
Reference
Joschka Fischer and the Making of the BerlinRepublic (2007). [OxfordUniversity Press]
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_picture_story_-_joschka_fischer_the_german_greens_and_the_balkans_-_january_2008.pdf
Date of retrieval 17th Oct 2010
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