Motivation Pills for the Popular Mindset

Crucial Tests of a Nation

Berlin's Duncker und Humblot publishing house has just published a book on means and methods for creating popular support for wars. The book entitled "Crucial Tests of a Nation" focuses on the Bundeswehr’s engagement abroad. The authors hold high-ranking posts in government administration, military, academia and the media. They include Mathis Feldhoff, journalist at the ZDF television channel, Michael Rühle, assistant at NATO as well as Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser and Claus Kreß, Professor for International Law at the Cologne University. In his text, Feldhoff elaborates a detailed propaganda concept of the enemy: "Starving children, marauding gangs, bloodthirsty dictators are images that can be used as moral flywheels for military engagement. They influence the popular mindset."[1]

Preliminary Reporting

Feldhoff explains that, after all, the Bundeswehr’s current military engagements need "preliminary reporting." To underline this, he points to the media's reporting on 9/11 in New York: "The thousands of repetitions of the TV footage showing the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2001 had the effect of motivation pills winning popular support in western countries for their governments’ war on Afghanistan." Today, the "designation of ‘Good and Evil’" in the media perception of the Afghan war is blurred, Feldhoff complains. "There are only few reports like the one in the Time Magazine on the young Afghan woman whose tormentors cut off her nose, which illustrate that a fast retreat of NATO forces could, for many Afghans, (...) lead to a humanitarian catastrophe."[2]

Just War

According to Feldhoff, the German population is demanding "clear arguments for morally justifying a military engagement abroad." "The people want a just war or none at all." Reporting, which foregoes a clear designation of guilt and the enemy, is also to the disadvantage of German soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, the ZDF journalist explains. After all, the mass media plays a central role "in replacing the ‘friendly disinterest’ on the home front with respect and approval."[3] Feldhoff, himself, has already implemented his ideas several times, for example, recently, with a portrait of the former commander of the German occupation forces in Kunduz/Afghanistan, Colonel Georg Klein. He portrayed him as "a person of high ethical standards" (german-foreign-policy.com reported [4]). Klein was responsible for the bombing of two fuel tankers, stolen by Afghan insurgents, leading to the killing of more than a hundred civilians.

False Considerations of Acceptance

Whereas the TV journalist Feldhoff concentrates on methods of propagating war in the mass media, another author of the book focuses his contribution on launching a "security debate." This debate must transmit the message that "lengthy stabilizing missions" and "military engagements" such as in Afghanistan are "of direct relevance to national security," explains Michael Rühle. Rühle heads NATO’s Energy Security Section. The debate to be developed should not "target John Doe." "Security policy has been and must remain the domain of the elite, regardless of opinion polls." "The German political class" according to Rühle "must be self-confident" in its security policy. This self-confidence must be strong enough "to take important decisions independently of partisanship and without false consideration of public acceptance." The NATO bureaucrat is appealing for the "approval of the deployment of armed forces on a much larger scale, than the obsolete ideas of self defense allow" - for example "to protect the critical energy infrastructure."[5]

No Guilt Complex!

Other authors in the book would also like to see an adequate "culture of discussion" in the domain of military policy. They trace its lack back to recent German history. "Germany is hardly able to realistically perceive threats, because it has seen itself as the biggest threat since 1945," writes retired Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser. According to him, "thinking on the basis of a guilt complex" obscures the perception of possible "threats" as well as of the "opportunity" to "take the lead" as a "driving force" in Europe.[6] Bastian Giegerich from the Bundeswehr's Institute for Social Sciences (SoWi) takes a similar position: "The good fortune not having to have participated in decolonization wars, nor wars such as those in Korea or Vietnam, have alienated Germans from the idea that political objectives, extending beyond merely territorial defense, could be reached through military engagement. The experience of WW II exacerbates the skepticism that military engagements could ever be legally and morally legitimate."[7]

No Restraints!

This is where the international jurist Claus Kreß (Cologne) picks up. According to him, "decisions concerning internationally legal foreign military deployment" should not be dependant upon the German constitution, which was influenced by the experience of German fascism: One should be "confident that 60 years after WW II, German politicians as well as the German population are capable of rationally deciding." Kreß is therefore not only calling for "preventive arrests of enemy combatants" within the framework of combat operations, but also displays acquiescence for killing innocent bystanders: "it is not forbidden to attack military targets, just because civilian collateral damage can be expected."[8]

[1], [2], [3] Mathis Feldhoff: Die Medien, die Politik und der Krieg. In: Christoph Schwegmann (Hg.): Bewährungsproben einer Nation. Die Entsendung der Bundeswehr ins Ausland. Berlin 2011
[4] see also Im Sinne der Soldaten
[5] Michael Rühle: In was für einer Welt leben wir? Sicherheitspolitische Folgerungen aus einer globalisierten Welt. In: Schwegmann (Hg.): Bewährungsproben einer Nation. Berlin 2011
[6] Ulrich Weisser: Die Rolle Deutschlands in der Welt. In: Schwegmann (Hg.): Bewährungsproben einer Nation. Berlin 2011
[7] Bastian Giegerich: Was Militär leisten kann: Die Bundeswehr als Instrument der Sicherheitspolitik. In: Schwegmann (Hg.): Bewährungsproben einer Nation. Berlin 2011
[8] Claus Kreß: Zu den Rechtsgrundlagen von Auslandseinsätzen der Bundeswehr. In: Schwegmann (Hg.): Bewährungsproben einer Nation. Berlin 2011