(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)